When a trust or will doesn’t look right, we find out what happened.

California trust law is written in the Probate Code. A few sections do most of the work:

• Probate Code section 16061.7 requires a trustee to send a formal notice when a revocable trust becomes irrevocable, usually because the person who made it has died. The notice must tell you that you have 120 days to contest.
• Probate Code section 16061.8 sets that 120-day deadline. If the trust terms are delivered to you during those 120 days, you get 60 days from delivery if that is later.
• Probate Code sections 16000 through 16081 set out a trustee's duties: loyalty, impartiality, no self-dealing, reasonable care, and keeping beneficiaries informed.
• Probate Code sections 16060 through 16064 give beneficiaries the right to information and, in most trusts, an annual accounting.
• Probate Code section 850 lets the court decide who owns property that should be in a trust or estate, and section 859 doubles the recovery when property was taken in bad faith, by undue influence, or through elder abuse.
• Welfare and Institutions Code section 15610.30 defines financial elder abuse, and section 15610.70 defines undue influence for every case, not just elder abuse.

Will contests follow a different set of rules. You can object before a will is admitted to probate, and once it is admitted you have 120 days to petition to revoke probate under Probate Code section 8270.

The first step is to find out what you are dealing with. If you are a beneficiary or an heir, you are entitled to a copy of the trust and its amendments. Ask for it in writing. Keep every envelope, because the mailing date of a notice can decide a deadline.

The second step is to figure out which of these situations you are in. Each one has its own page on this site: contesting a trust, contesting a will, undue influence and capacity, trustees who break the rules, accountings and information, property disputes, and financial elder abuse. Several often apply at once. A late amendment that favors a caregiver, for example, can support a trust contest, an undue influence claim, an elder abuse claim, and an 850 petition, all filed together.

The third step is to talk to a lawyer before any deadline gets close. Most of these cases are won or lost on evidence that disappears with time: bank records that get purged, witnesses who move, medical charts that get archived. Starting early costs less than starting late.

The 120-day trust contest deadline is the one that catches families most often, because it starts running from a letter that many people set aside. Will contests run from the date the will is admitted to probate. Claims against a person who has died generally must be filed within a year of death under Code of Civil Procedure sections 366.2 and 366.3. Financial elder abuse claims run four years from discovery. Claims against a trustee over something disclosed in an accounting run three years from that accounting.

These clocks overlap and they do not wait for each other. The wizard on this site walks through the questions that decide which ones apply to you.

We start every matter the same way: a conversation about dates, then the documents. The trust, every amendment, the notice letter, the will, the deed history on the family home, and whatever bank and medical records can be gathered quickly. From those we can usually tell you within days whether you have a claim worth bringing and what it would take.

Where the case belongs in Santa Clara County Superior Court, we file there. Where it belongs in San Mateo, Alameda, or San Francisco, we file there. We prepare every case as if it will be tried, because the cases that settle well are the ones the other side believes you will try. Mediation is usually available and often works, but only after the other side has seen the evidence.

Our founder is the co-founder and CEO of Legion, an AI litigation platform. That is why we can go through thousands of pages of bank and medical records in days rather than months, and why drafting does not sit in a queue. The lawyers still make every judgment call.

• A sibling is the trustee and will not share information. The law does not give a sibling trustee any slack. They owe the same duties as a professional, including the duty to account. A written demand followed by a petition to compel usually gets the documents.
• A caregiver, a new spouse, or a late-in-life friend ended up with most of the estate. Gifts to caregivers and to the people who drafted the documents are presumed to be the product of fraud or undue influence under Probate Code section 21380. A second spouse's share depends on what the trust says, what changed, and when.
• Assets that were supposed to be in the trust are gone. A section 850 petition can bring property back into the trust or estate, and section 859 can double the recovery.
• The will or trust was signed in the hospital. Timing, who arranged the signing, and the medical chart for that day are the core of most capacity and undue influence cases.
• You were left out and nobody will explain why. Being left out is not itself a claim, but a document that is inconsistent with everything the person said for years is a reason to look at how it was made.