At Blum Trusts & Estates we help people plan ahead for peace of mind. We are a legal practice that creates tailored, practical, convenient and comprehensive estate plans for individuals and couples to care for themselves, their children, and their property in the event of incapacity or death. We also help individuals and families carry out the end of life wishes set up in an estate plan in a way that promotes family harmony and ease.
Liat Blum
Liat Blum, the founder and principal attorney of Blum Trusts & Estates, is a trustworthy, down-to-earth and experienced attorney. She is a Marin County native who is deeply entrenched in the community where she grew up. A product of local schools including Ross Elementary School and Branson High School, Liat now lives amongst majestic redwood trees in Marin County with her husband and her young twins. Her elderly parents still live close by in the home where she was raised. She enjoys spending time with family and friends, hiking, cooking and live theater performances. She is actively involved in her children's school community as a board member and treasurer of the fundraising non-profit that supports the school.
Liat is a rare type of lawyer who melds expertise and affability. Liat received her B.A. in political science from Barnard College, the women’s college of Columbia University and her J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law. Liat became a lawyer because she wanted to help people achieve their goals with one of the most powerful tools out there - the law. Not only does she have experience in trusts and estates law but she also has perspective. As a parent of young children she understands how hard it is to decide who will take care of them in the worst case scenario. As a caretaker for her elderly parents, Liat understands what it means to strive to age at home with dignity. Liat has also dealt with family strife and tragedy over estate planning gone wrong and understands the stakes. Further, Liat is trained as a mediator and can help her clients make difficult decisions with ease.
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Commonly asked questions about estate planning
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Everyone needs estate planning because none of us are invincible. Everyone means individuals, married couples, divorcees, parents, elders, college students, members of the community with special needs, business owners etc. Estate planning consists of creating legally binding documents to care for yourself, your family members, pets, businesses, charities and/ or assets when you die. It also allows you to appoint people to care for your legal, medical and personal matters if you become sick and unable to handle your own affairs. No one wants to think about the worst case scenarios. Planning ahead for these scenarios will give you peace of mind knowing that your wishes can be carried out properly.
An experienced estate planning attorney can help create legal and practical estate planning documents that help you and your loved ones prepare for incapacity and death in order to avoid public, lengthy and expensive court processes and to minimize risk of future family conflicts.
The most common estate planning documents include:
Revocable Living Trust and supporting documents
Will - Last Will & Testament or Pourover Will if created along with a Trust
Advanced Healthcare Directive
HIPAA Authorization
Power of Attorney
Nomination of Guardians for minor children
Transfer documents for real estate
We also make recommendations for updating beneficiary designations on retirement accounts and life insurance policies.
We include practical documents in your estate plan such as a plan for digital assets, a letter that explains your nomination of guardian, detailed instructions for your executor and an organizational tool for keeping track of important documents like social security cards, passports, deeds, birth certificates etc.
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A trust is a legally created vessel into which assets are held until someone passes away. The trust includes very detailed instructions for how these assets should be maintained and distributed to the beneficiar(ies) of the trust. Having a trust gives you a certain amount of control over how your assets should be handled and distributed. A trust could specify that your children not get control of inherited funds until they reach a certain age past 18. A trust could dictate what would happen with embryos if you ever used artificial reproductive technology. A trust could set aside funds and instructions for care of a beloved pet. A trust can make it simple to disown an estranged family member or provide specific instructions to provide for a family member who struggles with substance abuse or money mismanagement issues.
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No! Most people do not need to do elaborate estate planning in order to minimize paying estate taxes. The threshold for paying estate tax is higher than the average person would expect. Per the IRS, if any individual passes away in 2025 and has less than $13,990,000 (or double that amount for a married couple) then that person does not need to pay estate taxes. But most people in the Bay Area do need to create a trust if they own a home to protect themselves and their heirs from lengthy probate proceedings.
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Probate is the public court process for distributing assets after someone passes away without sufficient estate planning. Probate is a public, expensive and time-consuming process. If an individual dies with assets over $184,500 (as of 2022) then these assets will need to go through the probate system unless an estate plan is put in place.
In probate, California law will determine how assets are distributed based on familial relationships. For example, if Richard passes away without any estate plan and he does not have any children and his parents have passed away, CA law may determine that his home should be passed along to his estranged cousins who live out of state instead of to his unmarried partner. A court appointed executor will have to go to court to ask the judge for permission to do anything and these decisions will be open to the public. This whole process will take much longer than if an estate plan is in place because the CA courts are also notoriously slow. A process that could have taken six months and cost $5,000 may take eighteen months and cost $20,000 instead.
Trust administration is the alternative to probate. If you have an estate plan in place at the time that you or your spouse pass away, then your estate can be administered in a private, fast-tracked, simplified process with the help of your attorney.