Estate Planning After 65 in California: What to Have in Place While the Choices Are Still Yours

By 65, many people have some estate planning in place. Maybe you signed a trust years ago. Maybe you have a will and a few documents in a binder. Or maybe you have been meaning to bring the whole plan together.

At this stage, a few questions matter most. Do your documents reflect your life today? Are your home and accounts coordinated with your plan? Are the people you named still the right people? And can the people you trust step in when you need them?

This is a good time to find out, because the choices are still yours. Here is what to have in place, and the one decision you may not know you can make.

On this page:

• What you should have in place after 65
• Whether your house and accounts are actually connected to your trust
• Who steps in if you cannot, and when
• Whether the people you named are still the right people
• What happens if you wait
• What getting this in order involves

What should you have in place after 65?

Estate planning for seniors comes down to three core pieces, and each does a different job.

• A living trust that holds your home and your significant accounts. The trust decides who receives what, puts the person you choose in charge, and generally lets your family settle things privately rather than through probate court.
• A durable power of attorney for finances. It names the person who can pay your bills and manage your accounts if you cannot, generally without a court having to appoint someone for you.
• An Advance Health Care Directive. It names the person who speaks with your doctors when you cannot, and it records what matters to you about your care.

Many people have at least one of these, but not all three working together. You may have a trust from the 1990s or 2000s but no power of attorney or health care directive, or ones signed decades ago. Or your power of attorney may still name a spouse who has since passed. The plan works when all three are current, the trust is properly funded, and the right people are named and ready to serve.

Is your house in your trust, and are your accounts connected to it?

The house usually is, but not always. Your accounts are where we most often find a gap: at least one that is not connected to the trust at all. Both are among the first things we check.

In California, a home held in your individual name generally cannot pass to your family without probate. Probate is a public, court-supervised process that often takes 18 to 30+ months, and its fees are set by law and grow with the size of the estate. A trust can generally keep your home out of that process, but only if the deed actually puts the home in the trust.

A trust only controls what it holds. You may have signed a trust, put it in the drawer, and never retitled the house. Or you may have refinanced, and the house was taken out of the trust for the loan and never put back. Years later your children could discover that the home has to go through probate anyway.

Your accounts need the same attention, and in our experience they are more likely than the house to fall outside the plan. Maybe a banker told you a checking or savings account did not need to go in the trust. Maybe you opened a brokerage account after you signed and never named a beneficiary. Each significant account should either be owned by your trust or name a beneficiary, and which one fits depends on the account and your plan. Joint ownership with your spouse can work too, as long as a beneficiary is also named for when you have both passed. Adding a child as a joint owner is usually not the best option, and it can create tax and creditor problems of its own. The goal is simple: nothing significant left in your name alone.

So look at the deed and the account statements, not just the binder. If the deed or an account shows your name alone, or if you refinanced, sold, bought, or opened anything since you signed, that is worth a conversation. When we prepare or update a trust, we prepare and record the deed that moves your home into it. We also show you how to align your accounts and beneficiary designations with it, so the plan holds what it is supposed to hold.

Who steps in if you cannot, and when?

You decide both, and the second question is the one you may never have been asked.

The “who” is the person you would want handling your finances and speaking with your doctors: often a spouse first, then a son or daughter. Choose the person who can be present, stay calm, and do what you would have wanted, even when it is hard.

The “when” is the choice you may not know you have. One option worth considering is whether someone you deeply trust should be able to help you now, rather than only after incapacity has been established. A power of attorney can be written so that your agent’s authority begins only after your incapacity is confirmed in writing, often by a doctor. Or it can be written to be effective now, with you still fully in charge and your son or daughter able to act alongside you. Your trust offers a similar choice: you can name an adult child as a co-trustee today, rather than only as the successor who takes over later. The trust spells out how the two of you share decisions.

Why consider it? Because of what the other path asks of your family on a hard day. If your agent’s authority begins only after your incapacity is confirmed, your family may first have to get that confirmation in writing. Sometimes they need it more than once before the bank will let the person you chose act. If the authority is already in place, that step may not be necessary, and your daughter simply helps, the way she may already be helping you with the mail.

Giving someone authority to help does not mean giving up your own authority. You remain in charge of every decision for as long as you are able. It is a choice about how much friction you want your family to face later. It depends on how much you want to hand off today, and on trust running in both directions. For some families it is the change that makes the years ahead easier. For others, waiting is the right call. It is one of the choices we talk through, after the basics: the plan current, the trust funded, and the right people named.

Are the people you named still the right people?

Documents name people, and people’s lives change.

If your plan is more than a few years old, it is worth confirming three things:

• The successor trustees and agents you named are still living.
• They are still willing and able to serve.
• The choices still make sense today, rather than reflecting who everyone was twenty-five years ago.

A brother who has moved across the country, a friend who is older than you are, a child who has since become the obvious choice: these are ordinary reasons a plan drifts.

Older trusts drift in other ways too. Your trust may be doing things you no longer want done if:

• The attorney who wrote your trust has retired.
• The distribution terms were written for children who are now adults with families of their own.
• Your trust from the 1990s or 2000s contains an A-B split that divides the trust in two when the first spouse dies.

The plan was written for a different season, and it can be brought up to date for this one.

What happens if you wait?

Estate planning documents generally need to be signed while you have the capacity to understand what you are signing, and no one can predict when that may change.

When you are healthy and able to make these decisions clearly, this is often the easiest time to handle them, and more options are available to you. If capacity ever becomes questionable, the options narrow. Documents signed under uncertain circumstances can be challenged later. And if nothing is in place when you can no longer manage your affairs, a court may have to appoint someone to manage them through a conservatorship, which is often public, slow, and expensive and can continue under court supervision for the rest of your life.

The advantage of handling this now is that you can make these decisions yourself, on your own timetable, while nothing is urgent. That is not a reason to rush. It is a reason to do this in the quiet season, when you can take your time.

What does getting this in order involve?

The process is usually more manageable than people expect, and you stay in charge of every choice.

We start with an Initial Planning Session, where we look at what you have, what has changed, and what you want now. If you have a trust, our attorneys review it and update what no longer fits, usually through an amendment and complete restatement. A restatement keeps the trust’s original name and date, so your accounts and property usually do not need to be retitled. If you have nothing, we build a complete estate plan from the ground up, in plain English, at your speed. Either way, we prepare and record the deed for your home. We also talk through the authority-now question, so it is a decision you make rather than one made for you later. Most families complete the work in about four to five weeks.

Your children are welcome in that conversation if you want them there. Once your plan is current, they may realize their own plans need attention too. You can come in at least every three years to review your plan, and sooner whenever life changes. We reach out as well, but you never have to wait to hear from us.

If your son or daughter sent you this, it may simply be because they want to know your plan will work when you need it and that it reflects what you want. The decisions remain yours. If they are the one helping gather information, we also have a guide written for adult children helping their parents. If they are not sure how to bring it up, our guide on how to talk to your parents about estate planning can help them start.

Schedule an Initial Planning Session or call (949) 718-0420. We will show you what is in place, whether your home and accounts are coordinated with the plan, what may need attention, and what to do next. You stay in charge of every decision.

Laura Meier, Esq., Founder, Meier Law Firm · Newport Beach, California · Last reviewed September 2026