Local Santa Barbara Estate Planning Attorney

At the California Law Offices of Stephen E. Penner, PC, we provide comprehensive representation for wills, trusts and probate. Stephen E. Penner, has more than 30 years of experience handling these complicated issues. We can discuss your short- and long-term goals, your family dynamics and other circumstances to help establish an estate plan tailored to your needs. We work with a well-respected CPA firm in Santa Barbara to help minimize inheritance tax and capital gains tax.

Multiple marriages and stepchildren can complicate your estate planning. It is important that you consult with a qualified lawyer to ensure your plan is done correctly to avoid future litigation. Additionally, we advise our clients who are going through divorces to review and revise their wills, trusts and named beneficiaries to better suit their new circumstances.

We provide result-oriented guidance to ensure your wills, trusts and directives protect your wealth and provide ease of financial management and health care decisions, as well as to help preserve a legacy for your family. Our practice includes situations involving:

  1. Inheritance disputes
  2. Trust administration
  3. Document review after a divorce
  4. Reassessment of real property values
  5. Undue influence from caregivers and family acquaintances
  6. Carryover losses

Trust Creation

Having a properly drafted trust can help ensure that your estate will avoid the probate process completely, enabling your heirs to receive their inheritances quicker and with little or no court intervention. We help our clients navigate and execute iron-clad documents including:

  1. Revocable living trusts
  2. Husband/wife trusts
  3. Individual trusts

Power of Attorney

If you become incapacitated, such as through an accident, sudden illness, unplanned or scheduled absence, or when you can't do it all by yourself, it’s important to have made the necessary arrangements for your affairs to be handled. Who will make sure bills are paid, banking deposits are made, and medical, insurance, and benefits paper work are dealt with? People often don't stop to consider the time, expense and legal measures that are involved for loved ones to set up a guardianship, when such costs and headaches could have been saved by signing a power of attorney.

Health Care Directives

Although death is an inevitable part of life, many of us in Western society remain reluctant to face the fact that we’re not going to live forever and plan for our end-of-life care. Consequently, many families are left with the stress and heartache of trying to agree on the best way to care for a terminally ill loved one who is unable to make wishes known.  The Law offices of Stephen E Penner can help you proactively prepare a Health Care Directive so that you can manage your health, on your own terms.

A Health Care Directive is a legal document that instructs others about your medical care should you be unable to make decisions on your own. It only becomes effective under the circumstances delineated in the document, and allows you to do either or both of the following:

  1. Appoint a health care agent. The AHCD allows you to appoint a health care agent (also known as “Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care”) who will have the legal authority to make health care decisions for you if you are no longer able to speak for yourself. This is typically a spouse, but can be another family member, close friend, or anyone else you feel will see that your wishes and expectations are met.
  2. Prepare instructions for health care. The AHCD allows you to make specific written instructions for your future health care in the event of any situation in which you can no longer speak for yourself. Otherwise known as a “Living Will,” it outlines your wishes about life-sustaining medical treatment if you are terminally ill or permanently unconscious.

Will creation and will contests

Our legal team believes everyone should have a well-drafted will so they can distribute their assets and property according to their wishes. Dying without leaving a will in many situations places a heavy burden on your heirs. In California, estates worth more than $100,000 must go through probate court in order to designate an administrator and administer the estate, unless the estate is distributed through a trust, which avoids probate.