Trust administration / $3,500 to $12,000
When you are the trustee and did not ask to be.
Someone trusted you with their trust. We lay out the twelve steps, run the calendar, and make sure you are protected while you do a job you never trained for.
First, breathe
Nothing has to happen this week. The first legal deadline is sixty days out, and we will have it on the board before then.
A successor trustee is personally responsible for getting this right: notifying the right people, protecting the assets, filing the taxes and distributing what is left in the right shares. Most of our trustee clients are a grieving adult child with a full time job. The point of hiring us is that you make the decisions and we carry the procedure.
Fees are flat, quoted after we read the trust and see the asset list at the first meeting. A single house and three accounts going to two siblings sits near $3,500. A trust with rental property, a business interest and a beneficiary who wants to argue sits near $12,000. The trust pays the fee, not you.
The twelve steps
Every administration, in this order.
- Read the trust and gather originals
Trust, amendments, pour-over will, deeds, account statements, the death certificate.
- Accept the trusteeship in writing
A short document that makes you the trustee of record. Banks will ask for it.
- Get a tax ID for the trust
The trust becomes irrevocable at death and needs its own number for the accounts.
- Send the Probate Code 16061.7 notice
Within sixty days, to every beneficiary and heir. It starts the 120 day window to contest.
- Lodge the will with the court
California requires the original will be filed in the county of death within thirty days, even with a trust.
- Inventory and value the assets
Date of death appraisals for real property, statements for everything else. This sets the new tax basis.
- Retitle and secure
Accounts into the trust's name, insurance kept current, the house locked and the mail forwarded.
- Handle creditors and bills
Final medical, credit cards, the mortgage. Pay what is owed, dispute what is not, and keep the record.
- File the property tax forms
The change in ownership statement and, for a child inheriting a home, the Proposition 19 claim with its deadline.
- File the tax returns
The decedent's final 1040, the trust's 1041, and an estate tax return only above the federal exemption.
- Account to the beneficiaries
A written accounting of what came in and went out, with a waiver or a court approval before distribution.
- Distribute and close
Receipts and releases from each beneficiary, final transfers, and a closing letter for your records.
Timing and risk
Six to twelve months, if nobody fights.
A clean administration with a house to sell runs six to nine months, most of it waiting on the appraisal, the sale and the tax returns. Add a rental property, a business or an out of state asset and it runs closer to a year. We tell you where you are in the twelve steps at every call.
The risk a trustee carries is personal. Distribute too early and a creditor or the Franchise Tax Board can come to you. Skip the 16061.7 notice and a beneficiary keeps the right to contest for years. Favor one sibling and the others can petition the court. We keep you on the safe side of each of those, and if a dispute does start, Marcus handles it at an hourly rate with an estimate first.
If there is no trust and the estate is over $184,500, you are looking at probate instead. If the trust holds a house that has to be sold, our real estate work is included in the same engagement. Either way, start with the free consult and bring the trust.