The four documents to have in place
1. Durable Power of Attorney (Prob. Code §§4000-4545)
California adopted the Uniform Statutory Form Power of Attorney. CA POAs must be signed by the principal and either notarized or witnessed by two adults.1A bank-friendly POA from a CA attorney runs $300–$1,000 and is meaningfully more readily accepted by financial institutions than generic out-of-state or online forms.
2. Advance Health Care Directive (Prob. Code §§4600-4806)
California uses a single document for medical advance planning — the AHCD. Unlike NY (which separates Health Care Proxy from Living Will), CA combines POA for healthcare and living-will provisions in one statutory form (Prob. Code §4701).2
3. POLST (Prob. Code §4780 et seq.)
For patients with serious illness, the Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment?form — signed by a physician, NP, or PA — carries portable medical orders that EMS and hospital staff will honor. Different from AHCD; both are valuable for advanced-illness patients.
4. Revocable Living Trust
The workhorse of California estate planning. CA’s statutory probate fee schedule plus the 12–18 month typical probate timeline make trust-based planning the default for almost any CA family with non-trivial assets. A typical CA revocable trust package runs $1,500–$4,500.
Prop 19 — the inheritance ambush
Effective February 16, 2021, Proposition 19 substantially narrowed the parent-child property-tax exclusion that had existed under prior law (Prop 58 / Prop 193). Before Prop 19, a child could inherit a parent’s home and keep the parent’s base-year property tax value — often producing decades of below-market property tax.3
Under Prop 19, the exclusion is now limited:
- Only applies to the family home (not investment property or vacation home)
- Only applies if the child moves into the home as their primary residence within 1 year of transfer
- Capped at the parent’s base-year value plus a cap (currently $1,044,586 for the period 2/2025-2/2027); excess gets reassessed
Inherited rental property or vacation homes are fully reassessed to market value at transfer. No parent-child exclusion applies. For a long-held Bay Area rental property with a $200k base-year value and $2M market value, the reassessment can produce property tax that exceeds rental income.
California's probate — and why families avoid it
California probate is expensive and slow. Two factors compound:
- Statutory fees paid twice. Prob. Code §10810 sets a fixed fee schedule: 4% on the first $100k, 3% on the next $100k, 2% on the next $800k, 1% on the next $9M, 0.5% on the next $15M. The schedule is paid once to the attorney and once to the personal representative. On a $1M gross estate, that produces $46,000 in ordinary statutory fees — $23,000 to each.4
- Timeline.Typical CA probate runs 12–18 months from filing to distribution. Complex probates can run 2–3 years.
Small-estate alternatives are available:
- Small-estate? affidavit (Prob. Code §13100): $208,850 personal property limit (post-4/1/2025).
- Primary residence simplified petition(Prob. Code §§13150-13157, as amended by AB 2016 effective 4/1/2025): up to $750,000 for the decedent’s primary California home.
- Spousal property petition (Prob. Code §13650): for inter-spousal transfers.
For estates exceeding these thresholds without a trust, full probate is required — which is why nearly every CA family with meaningful assets sets up a revocable living trust instead.
California elder abuse and undue influence statutes
California has the most developed elder-abuse civil framework in the country — the Elder Abuse and Dependent Adult Civil Protection Act (EADACPA, W&I Code §15600 et seq.). Key features:5
- Civil cause of action for elder abuse (physical, neglect, abandonment, isolation, abduction, financial)
- Enhanced damages and attorney’s fees if proven by clear and convincing evidence
- Pain & suffering damages survive the decedent
- Four-factor undue-influence test (W&I §15610.70): vulnerability of victim, apparent authority of influencer, actions/tactics used, equity of result
If you suspect your parent is being financially exploited, CA elder-abuse statutes give you real legal levers. Many CA elder-law attorneys handle these on contingency given the statutory fee-shifting.
What to do this quarter
- Confirm AHCD and POA are current. If they’re generic out-of-state documents, redo with a CA attorney.
- If the family expects to inherit a CA property, model Prop 19 carefully — especially for non-primary residences.
- If your parent has assets above the small-estate threshold (~$200k+) and no trust, talk to a CA estate-planning attorney. A $2,500 trust avoids $46,000 of probate fees on a $1M estate.
- If suspecting elder financial abuse, document, contact APS? (1-833-401-0832), and talk to a CA elder-law attorney about EADACPA remedies.