Can I avoid probate if the estate is small?

Often, yes. Whether you qualify is arithmetic rather than argument, and it is worth doing before anyone opens a file.

Often, yes — and a surprising number of families who are told they need a probate do not. Whether you qualify is arithmetic, not argument. Ask whoever tells you a probate is required to show you the sum.

The affidavit route

California allows the personal property of a smaller estate to be collected by affidavit, without opening a court proceeding at all. Forty days have to pass since the death. After that the person entitled to the property presents a signed affidavit, with a certified copy of the death certificate, to whoever is holding the asset — a bank, a brokerage, a transfer agent — and they release it.

No filing, no hearing, no statutory fee. For an estate consisting of a couple of accounts and a car, this is the whole of it.

There is a separate, parallel route for real property of small value, and a middle path — a petition to determine succession — for estates that are too large for the affidavit but still well short of a full administration.

The threshold, and why we will not print it here

The limit is set by statute and adjusted periodically for inflation. It has been raised more than once in recent years, and a figure that was right when an article was written is one of the more common ways people conclude they do not qualify when in fact they do. Check the current number, or ask someone to check it for you.

What is counted, and what is not

This is where most families go wrong in their own favor or against it. The threshold applies to the property that would actually pass through probate. Several things are excluded from the calculation, among them:

• property held in a trust;
• assets passing to a named beneficiary, such as retirement accounts and life insurance;
• property held in joint tenancy, which passes to the survivor by operation of law;
• property passing outright to a surviving spouse, which has its own procedure.

A house often takes an estate over the line on its own. But a house in a trust, or a house passing entirely to a spouse, may not count at all.

Do the arithmetic first

The order matters. Once a probate is opened it is not simply abandoned, and the statutory fee is calculated on the estate rather than on the effort. Fifteen minutes with a list of assets, before anything is filed, is the highest-value conversation in this whole area of work.