Estate Planning and Probate Guidance for Mill Valley Residents

Start with the situation you need to address

Planning while you are alive involves documents that can address how decisions are made if you cannot act for yourself and how property may be handled later. Estate planning can coordinate wills, trusts, financial authority, and health-care decisions. Those documents have different purposes, so changing one without considering the others may leave your overall plan inconsistent.

After a death, the relevant question shifts to administration. A trustee may need to administer a trust, while formal probate may apply in other circumstances. The governing documents and ownership of the assets matter to that distinction. Reviewing them together can clarify which path is relevant before you decide what to change or what administration to discuss.

Compare documents before making changes

Gather the current will and any trust documents, along with documents addressing financial authority and health-care decisions. If you are asking about administration after a death, include available documents relating to the deceased person’s estate and the assets at issue. This is a practical way to make a discussion more focused, not a legal requirement.

For each document, note whom it names, what role it addresses, and whether it appears to match your present circumstances. Useful questions include: Does the document address the decision you are concerned about? Is it consistent with the other documents? Is the issue about planning during life or handling property after death? These questions help identify what needs review without assuming that every document must be replaced.

Choose a focused planning or administration conversation

The available topics cover distinct needs rather than a checklist every person must complete. Planning topics include wills, pour-over wills, revocable living trusts, irrevocable trusts, asset protection trusts, charitable trusts, pet trusts, special needs trusts, gift tax planning, and business succession planning. Financial and health-care authority are addressed through financial powers of attorney, healthcare powers of attorney, and advance healthcare directives and living wills.

For matters after a death, the topics include trust administration, probate administration, executor and trustee services, and ancillary probate. The right starting point depends on the documents, assets, and question you bring—not simply on selecting the largest number of planning options. A focused review can help you identify which subject is relevant and what should be discussed next.

When formal probate is part of the question

If formal probate is being considered in a Marin County decedent-estate matter, the Marin County Probate Examiner/Research Attorney reviews decedent-estate documents for procedural correctness before hearings. The examiner cannot provide legal advice or advisory opinions. That court review is relevant to probate proceedings; it is not a routine approval process for planning documents prepared while someone is alive.

Discuss your options from Mill Valley

Codi M. Dada Law Office P.C. has one in-person office at 802 Grant Ave, Novato, CA 94945, and provides virtual services statewide. To begin, identify whether your concern is planning during life, trust administration, or possible probate, and gather the documents that relate to that concern. The next discussion can then focus on what the documents say, what question remains, and which planning or administration topic fits.