People are asking you questions and papers are starting to pile up, and nobody handed you instructions. Let me give you some. You don't have to finish this today. Take it one step at a time.
The first few days
In the first days after a death, your only real jobs are practical and small. The big legal and financial decisions can wait, and they should.
The death has to be formally pronounced. If your parent was in a hospital or in hospice care, the staff handles this automatically. If they passed away at home unexpectedly, call 911, and the appropriate medical professional or the county coroner will make the official pronouncement. This has to happen before anything else can move forward.
Choose a funeral home or cremation provider. Whoever you choose will guide you through the next few steps, including the paperwork. In California, the funeral director typically prepares and files the death certificate, and the law requires it to be filed quickly, within eight days. You don't have to manage that part yourself; your provider will.
Order more certified death certificates than you think you'll need. This is the one piece of practical advice I give every family, because almost everyone under-orders. Banks, the county, insurance companies, and the DMV will each want their own certified copy. Ordering ten or so at the outset saves you weeks of waiting for more later. Your funeral provider can help you request them.
Make your calls. Tell close family first, then ask a couple of those people to help you spread the word. You should not have to make every phone call yourself in the worst week of your life.
Secure the house and any property. Lock it up. If your parent lived alone, consider changing the locks. Park vehicles somewhere safe. Make a quick written list of any valuables, and find care for pets right away. None of this means you mistrust anyone. It protects the estate until the right person has legal authority to manage it.
What NOT to do yet
This part matters as much as the to-do list, and almost nobody tells families about it.
In these first weeks, please do not start distributing your parent's belongings, do not close their bank accounts, do not pay their debts out of your own pocket, and do not make any quick financial decisions. It is natural to want to "handle things" and tidy up, but until the estate's legal status is sorted out, moving money or property around can create real problems.
Paying a parent's debts with your own funds can leave you out of pocket with no clean way to be repaid. The estate's debts get paid in an orderly way, from the estate, once the right person is in charge. Give yourself permission to leave that alone for now.
"The families I worry about aren't the ones who call me too early. They're the ones who spent two months trying to handle everything themselves, paying bills, moving accounts, giving things away, and then called me with a much harder problem than they started with."
Jonette M. Montgomery
Around week two: find the estate plan
Once the first wave has settled and you have death certificates in hand, the next job is to find out what your parent left behind in the way of planning. You're looking for one of three situations: a living trust, a will, or nothing at all.
Search the usual places. Estate planning documents tend to live in a home safe, a desk or filing cabinet, a bank safe deposit box, or with the attorney who prepared them. A couple of useful clues: if your parent had a safe deposit box, you may need a death certificate, and sometimes a court order, to get into it. And you can check the county recorder's office for the deed to their home. If that deed shows the property was transferred into something like "[Parent's Name] Living Trust," that tells you a trust exists, even if you haven't found the paperwork yet.
A legal point worth knowing: under California law, if you find an original will, it must be delivered to the Superior Court in the county where your parent lived within 30 days of the death, whether or not the estate ends up needing probate. This is one of the few hard deadlines in those early weeks, so don't set a will aside in a drawer.
Figuring out what process applies
What you found in the step above largely determines what comes next. This is where families get understandably confused, so here's the plain-English version.
If there's a living trust, the estate usually does not go through probate court. Instead there's a process called trust administration: the successor trustee (often one of the children) steps in, follows the trust's instructions, handles the debts and taxes, and distributes what's left. It's generally faster, more private, and less expensive than probate, but it still has real legal steps and deadlines, and the trustee takes on serious responsibility.
If there's only a will, or no will at all, the estate may need to go through probate, the court-supervised process for settling an estate. A will doesn't avoid probate; it gets carried out through it. Whether full probate is required depends mostly on what your parent owned and how it was titled.
If most assets pass another way, probate may be avoidable entirely. Accounts with named beneficiaries, property held in joint tenancy, and similar arrangements transfer directly to the named person without court involvement. Many families find that a good portion of an estate moves this way.
Smaller estates have shortcuts. California provides simplified procedures for estates under a certain dollar value and for transferring a modest primary residence, which are far quicker and cheaper than full probate. The exact thresholds are set by the state and change over time, so the date of death matters. The point is that "do we even need probate?" has a real answer, and it's worth finding out early.
When to call an attorney
You don't necessarily need a lawyer for everything here. But it's worth a conversation if any of the following is true: your parent owned a home or other real estate, there's a trust and you've been named successor trustee, the estate looks like it may need probate, or the family isn't on the same page about how things should go.
A short, honest conversation early on can save a family months of confusion and real money. Sometimes that conversation ends with me saying "you don't need me, here's the simple path, you can largely handle this yourselves." If that's the right answer for your family, that's the answer you'll get. I'm not going to point you toward a court process you don't need.
You don't have to carry this alone
The first two weeks after losing a parent are not the time to become an expert in California estate law. They're the time to grieve, lean on family, and take the practical steps one at a time. The legal pieces can be sorted out methodically, with help, once you're ready.
If you've recently lost a parent here in Kings County or Tulare County and you're not sure what process applies, or whether you need one at all, you're welcome to call the office or send a message through the contact page. We'll sit down, figure out where things stand, and take it from there together.
This article is general information about settling an estate in California, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Deadlines, dollar thresholds, and procedures change over time, and every family's situation is different. For advice about your circumstances, please speak with a qualified attorney.
Law Office of Jonette M. Montgomery: estate planning, trust administration, and probate for families in Hanford, Corcoran, Lemoore, Avenal, Tulare, and throughout Kings and Tulare County.