When California residents want to use their estate plans to protect their assets, they have multiple options they could use to do so. In particular, they could utilize trusts to remove assets from the estate and into the ownership of the trusts. Of course, someone also needs to be appointed to manage the assets.
The first steps of opening a probate case
Most California estates will go through a legal process in order to close them unless the deceased parties planned ahead to avoid this step. This legal process is known as probate, and it involves many actions in order to ensure that the decedent's final affairs have been properly addressed. Commonly, a person will have appointed an executor in his or her will to handle these actions.
