Is Your Old Trust Still Good? Updating a Living Trust After 10 or 20 Years

A revocable living trust in California generally does not expire. So if yours was drafted 10 or 20 years ago, it is probably still valid. What it may not be is current.

Think about everything that has changed since you signed your trust. The people have changed. Some have moved away, some have passed, and some are no longer who you would choose today. What you own has changed. You may have bought or sold homes, opened new accounts, or built a business that did not exist back then. And the law has changed around all of it, including the tax rules your trust was built on.

Your trust did not keep up with any of those changes.

Finding the gaps now means you can still decide what to do about them. Otherwise your spouse or children may be the ones to discover them, when they are relying on the plan.

None of that means you did anything wrong. It means your life kept moving. Updating an older plan is usually less involved than people fear. Let’s look together at where yours stands.

On this page:

• Whether a living trust expires in California
• The A-B trust problem in older trusts
• Trust amendment versus restatement
• What to do if the attorney who wrote your trust is gone
• The six things we find most often in older trusts
• What happens in a trust review
• What an updated plan gives your family

Does a living trust expire in California?

Generally, no. Age alone does not invalidate a trust. A trust you signed in 1998 or 2008 is usually still a legally valid document today.

But “still valid” and “still good” are two different questions. The document from that era was written for a different life: minor children instead of adults, different assets, successor trustees who have since moved or passed away, and a body of law that has changed around it. So the real question is not whether your trust expired. It is whether the plan still fits the family, the assets, and the wishes you have today.

The A-B trust problem hiding in trusts from the 1990s and 2000s

In many older trusts, when the first spouse dies, the trust has to be divided into two trusts. You likely do not remember choosing that, or why it mattered. What it means now is that your husband or wife is left dealing with two trusts, less control, more hassle, and a tax problem waiting for your children, in one of the hardest years of their lives.

That design has a name: an A-B trust, sometimes called a bypass or credit shelter trust. Back then the estate tax reached many families, and dividing the trust at the first death was how planners helped families reduce or avoid estate taxes. Most estates today are well under the federal estate tax exemption, so for many families that concern is no longer the issue it once was. The complexity stays anyway, and the surviving spouse is the one who lives with it.

Here is what that looks like for whichever of you outlives the other:

• Two trusts to run instead of one, with separate accounts and a separate tax return every year.
• Less freedom with money that used to be simply theirs. The assets on the bypass side are still there for the surviving spouse, but the trust sets rules about how they can be used, and those rules were locked in at the first death.
• Answering to the children about money. Whatever is left in the bypass trust generally goes to the children, which can leave the surviving spouse accountable to their own kids for how it is invested and spent.
• A tax bill waiting for your children. Assets in the bypass trust often miss a second step-up in basis, which can leave your kids a capital gains bill a current plan may have avoided.

That is a lot to hand someone who is already grieving. Whether your trust works this way depends on how it was drafted, and it is usually a straightforward fix once we see the document. The point of finding out now is that both of you are still here to decide what you want instead.

Do you need a trust amendment or a restatement?

Both are ways to change a trust. What matters is which one leaves your family with a plan they can actually follow.

An amendment changes a few specific provisions and leaves the rest of the old document standing. A restatement rewrites the entire trust on a current foundation while keeping its original name and date, so your accounts and property usually do not need to be retitled.

For a plan that is decades old, one clean set of documents beats stacked amendments. Amendments are usually just a few pages, and they are exactly the pages that get lost, contradict each other, or confuse the person trying to follow your plan in a crisis. A trust with three amendments, a power of attorney from a different decade, and a will that references the wrong provisions is not a plan. It is a puzzle your family has to solve while grieving.

That is why, when we update a plan, we update all of it. We amend and restate the trust and refresh your will, powers of attorney, and health care directive at the same time. We do not make piecemeal edits to documents another attorney drafted. You get one coordinated, current plan that speaks with one voice when your family needs it.

What if the attorney who wrote your trust retired or passed away?

You are not stuck. Your attorney’s retirement or death does not by itself invalidate the documents they prepared, and we update plans drafted by other attorneys all the time. We will redraft the plan so it is current and complete rather than patch what is there. Many of our clients came to us exactly this way, holding a binder from a firm that no longer answers the phone and wondering who they were supposed to call now.

We have helped more than 3,000 California families since 2010. And because we are a multi-attorney firm rather than a solo practice, we are built to be your family’s attorneys for every stage of life and every life event, and to be here for your children when it is their turn.

The six things we find most often in older trusts

When we review trusts from the 1990s and 2000s, the same findings come up again and again, and every one of them decides something real for your family:

• Old A-B trust provisions that no longer make sense under current law.
• Trusts that were never fully funded. A trust only controls assets that are coordinated with it, so anything left outside may still require probate or another transfer process.
• Beneficiary designations that contradict the trust. Retirement accounts and life insurance pass by their own paperwork, and older designations often point somewhere the trust never intended.
• Successor trustees who have passed away, moved, or fallen out of the family.
• Distribution terms written for young children who are now adults with families of their own.
• Inheritances left outright to your children. Many older trusts hand everything over in one lump at a set age. An inheritance received outright can be exposed to a divorce, a lawsuit, or creditors, where one left in trust for them is often better protected.

The common thread is not simply that the trust is old. It is that the plan no longer fits the family, or the family’s current circumstances.

None of these has to become a crisis. Every one of them is fixable, and handling them now makes it a decision rather than an emergency. A current, coordinated plan generally lets your family settle things privately through trust administration rather than in probate court. That is also why we recommend reviewing a plan at least every three years, and any time life changes in a real way. Most of these are easier to address while you can still make the choices yourself than after the plan has to work.

What happens in a trust review?

A review starts with a conversation, not an audit. Usually something has changed: a birth, a death, a move, a retirement, a sale, or simply years passing while the law kept moving.

1. Start with a conversation. Your first meeting is about what has changed in your life and what you want your plan to accomplish now. It is not a word-for-word audit of your old documents. You will leave knowing what we recommend and the clear flat fee for any work, before you decide anything.
2. Bring what you have. Your trust, your will, your powers of attorney, whatever exists, even if it is a binder you have not opened in fifteen years. Do not worry about organizing it, and if you can get it to us before the meeting, even better. If a spouse has already passed away, the review is different. We need to read the trust carefully to see what it required at the first death and what options the surviving spouse still has. There may be subtrusts that were never funded, rules already locked in place, or an old A-B trust that needs to be funded or modified before the rest of the plan can be brought current.
3. Design the updated plan together. An attorney sits down with you and works through what you want now: who should receive what, who should serve in each role, and how your assets should be titled and coordinated. Then we prepare your updated plan around those decisions, fully redrafted rather than patched, so it works the way you intend. That design meeting is the heart of our estate planning work, and most families complete an update in about four to five weeks.

Once you are our client, keeping the plan current is built into the relationship. You can come in every three years to review the plan, and any major life event is a reason to come in sooner and talk it through. We reach out as well, but you never have to wait to hear from us. That is how the binder stops going another decade without daylight.

What an updated plan gives your family

The goal is not a newer binder. It is a plan that reflects what you want, works the way you intend, and leaves your family knowing what to do.

The people named to step in are the people you trust. Your home, your accounts, and your beneficiary designations all point the same direction. Your husband or wife has one clear plan to follow. Your children can see what you intended and who to turn to when the time comes.

They have one coordinated plan and a firm that already knows your family. That is one of the kindest things you can hand the people you love.

You do not need to diagnose your old trust before you reach out. If you want to know whether the plan you have still fits the life you have now, finding out starts with one conversation. Schedule an Initial Planning Session or call (949) 718-0420, and we will show you where the plan stands, what may need attention, and what to do next.

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