Client resources
Estate planning glossary
Plain-English starting points for common estate planning and trust terms. These are general explanations, not legal definitions for your circumstances and not legal advice.
Search and browse glossary terms
- Advance health care directive
A document that can record health care instructions and name someone to make health care decisions if you cannot make or communicate them yourself.
- Agent
A person named to act for someone else under a document such as a power of attorney or advance health care directive. The document and applicable law define the agent’s authority.
- Beneficiary
A person or organization named to receive something under a will, trust, account, or other arrangement.
- Durable power of attorney
A document used to give a chosen agent authority over specified financial or legal matters during your life. What the agent may do, and when the authority applies, depends on the document and the law.
- Estate plan
A coordinated set of documents and decisions for managing property and decision-making during life and after death. It may include a trust, will, powers of attorney, and health care instructions.
- Fiduciary
A person or institution in a position of legal responsibility for another person or that person’s property. Trustees are fiduciaries; their duties come from the governing document and the law.
- Funding
Aligning ownership or beneficiary records with the estate plan so a trust covers the property intended for it. The appropriate step varies by asset; a general checklist is not a direction to retitle anything.
- Incapacity
A circumstance in which someone cannot make or communicate certain decisions. A website cannot determine incapacity; the controlling document and applicable law govern how it is established and who may act.
- Medi-Cal
California’s Medicaid program. Long-term care planning can include Medi-Cal questions, but eligibility and estate recovery depend on the person’s facts and the rules in effect at the relevant time.
- Pour-over will
A will designed to direct certain property remaining in a person’s probate estate to an existing trust after death. It is a backup document, not a substitute for funding the trust during life.
- Probate
A court process used in some estates after a death. Whether it is required depends on the property, how it is owned, beneficiary designations, and the documents in place. CBM does not offer probate services.
- Revocable living trust
A trust that its creator can generally amend or revoke while able to do so. It identifies who manages trust property and who benefits from it. Signing a trust does not, by itself, transfer every asset into it.
- Settlor, grantor, or trustor
Terms commonly used for the person who creates a trust. A trust document may use one of these terms for the same role.
- Successor trustee
The person or institution designated to take over trustee responsibilities when the current trustee can no longer or no longer should serve under the trust’s terms.
- Trust administration
The work of carrying out a trust after a death or another trustee transition. It can include identifying trust property, following the trust, keeping records, communicating, and obtaining advice before distributions.
- Trustee
The person or institution responsible for managing trust property and following the trust’s terms and applicable duties. The same person may hold the role at one stage and a successor may serve later.
- Will
A document that states how certain property should pass at death and can name a person to handle the estate. A will does not control every asset and does not itself avoid probate.
Primary-source starting points
Rules and forms can change. These public agencies are useful starting points; they do not replace advice about a particular document or family.