Counsel for What Comes After
Grief keeps its own calendar, and the law does not honor it. Within days of losing a parent or a spouse — sometimes within hours — the notices begin: a certified letter from a trustee, a statutory deadline, a trust document written in language no one ever meant to be read at a kitchen table. Most people live an entire life without touching the legal system, and when it finally reaches them, this is how it happens — a death, a trust, and a set of rules called the Probate Code that can seem designed to be impenetrable. If that is where you are, take a breath. You are allowed to grieve first. Walking families through what comes next is what this firm was built to do, and from here forward you will not be doing it alone.
We think of this work as stewardship. Before anything is filed, before anyone is put on notice, we sit with you and we listen — to who your mother was, to what your father promised at the holiday table, to when the new spouse arrived and when the amendment appeared. Trust litigation is won on facts like these, and they surface only when a lawyer is patient enough to hear them. We listen first, and we strategize from what we learn.
Then we bring the law, and here we should be plain about who we are. Many excellent attorneys draft trusts but will not litigate them; the courtroom is a different profession. This firm was built around the dispute itself — the contested trust, the suspect amendment, the trustee who will not account. We know the Probate Code deeply, and through our appellate and trial practice we have helped shape the law we now practice under. Resolution takes many forms, and we pursue all of them: a negotiated outcome reached from a position of strength, a mediated settlement, and, when the other side leaves no honorable alternative, trial.
What sets our knowledge apart is the marriage of two fields most firms keep separate. Probate and family law are deeply interconnected: under Probate Code section 100(a), a decedent may pass all of his or her separate property, but only one half of the community property. Whether an asset is separate or community therefore decides who inherits what — and second-marriage estates in particular fail on exactly this analysis, producing outcomes the law never intended. Because we practice at the highest level under both codes, we see claims and defenses that a probate-only lawyer will miss.
The matters we handle tend to rhyme. A trust changed drastically late in life, while a parent was ill and someone was standing very close by. A trust the children were always told divided everything equally, but does not read that way. A trustee — often a sibling, often a step-parent — who will not communicate, will not account, will not distribute, or who has begun treating the trust as personal property. Powers of attorney abused. Assets that were never placed into the trust at all. Distributions tied to milestones that have quietly become instruments of control. We also represent trustees who intend to do the job honorably and want their administration kept transparent and beyond reproach — the surest way to keep a family out of court. And when the first certified letter arrives, with its notice of administration and its 120-day clock already running, we sit down with the instrument and explain, clearly and without drama, exactly where you stand and what must happen by when.
A word about the practical. The trust estates we handle are typically valued above one million dollars, and often above two. We work on an hourly basis or, where the posture of the case supports it, on contingency — and we will tell you plainly which your case calls for and why. Because we keep this practice deliberately small, you will know your lawyer and your lawyer will know you. When something happens in your case, or when a question surfaces at the hour questions tend to surface, you will be able to reach us.
It takes an unusual firm to hold both halves of this work: technical command of two interlocking codes, and the patience to sit with a family in the rawest season of its life. Egan Law was built to hold both. Come in, tell us about the person you lost and what has happened since. We will take it from there.
