Frequently asked questions

A will still goes through probate — a public, court-supervised process that in California commonly takes many months and consumes a meaningful percentage of the estate. A revocable living trust transfers title without probate, keeps your affairs private, and names who acts for you if you become incapacitated. For most California homeowners the trust is the better foundation, with a pour-over will as the backstop.

Signing a trust does not move anything into it. Funding is the step where deeds are recorded, accounts are retitled and beneficiary designations are updated so the trust actually owns or controls the assets. An unfunded trust protects nothing, which is why funding is part of our engagement rather than left to the client.

You have real legal duties that begin immediately — statutory notices to beneficiaries and heirs, securing and valuing assets, and keeping records that will satisfy an accounting. Most trustee liability comes from honest mistakes by people who were never told what the law required. Talk to us before you distribute anything.

Nine coordinated documents plus a 24-hour hotline for the people you named, so your minor children are never placed with strangers or into the state system while a court sorts things out. A guardian nomination inside a will only takes effect after probate opens — this creates authority that works the same day.

Typically: inventorying what autonomous systems are already deployed and classifying each as bounded, unbounded or partially bounded; defining what each agent is permitted to do as enforceable output thresholds; putting those limits in-band so the system refuses what falls outside them; recording actions in a tamper-evident, append-only form; positioning humans on the loop where consequences are irreversible; and giving the board reporting it can act on. The deliverable is a program you can evidence, not a policy document nobody follows.

Because the legal bounds have to be enforceable in the system, not just written in a memo. Steve brings eighteen years of national security and signals intelligence experience to that work and serves as counsel to an AI traceability and control company, working directly with the engineers building agent identity and audit systems.

Estate plans, business formations and the Child Protection Plan are quoted flat wherever possible so you know the number in advance. Ongoing corporate counsel and AI governance engagements are scoped per matter with an engagement retainer credited against work performed. Fees are confirmed in a written engagement agreement before work begins.

Information sent before an engagement exists may not be protected by the attorney-client privilege, so please keep the form brief and do not attach confidential documents. Once you are a client, use the secure portal — documents there are encrypted in transit and at rest, stored outside the public website directory, and retrievable only by you and the firm.

Steve is licensed in California and handles California trust, estate and business matters. AI governance advisory work is frequently national in scope; where another jurisdiction’s law controls, we say so and coordinate with local counsel rather than guess.