Sacramento serves as California’s state capital and the economic and governmental heart of the Central Valley, anchoring a diverse regional economy that spans state government employment, healthcare, agriculture, technology, real estate, and professional services. The Sacramento metropolitan area’s rapid population growth — driven by an influx of Bay Area residents seeking more affordable housing while maintaining Northern California lifestyle — has created a growing and increasingly sophisticated estate planning market where longtime Sacramento families, transplanted Bay Area professionals, agricultural landowners, and state government employees all require comprehensive estate planning counsel tailored to California’s specific legal framework.
California creates one of the most complex and consequential estate planning environments in the United States. California imposes no state estate tax — but California’s high income tax rates, community property system, and specific trust and probate laws create a distinctive planning landscape that rewards California-specific legal expertise. The California Probate Code’s mandatory probate process for estates exceeding one hundred sixty-six thousand two hundred fifty dollars — combined with the expense and time that California probate proceedings require — makes probate avoidance through trust-based planning particularly important for Sacramento families at virtually every wealth level. California’s Proposition 19 — which significantly changed property tax reassessment rules for inherited property — has transformed the estate planning calculus for California families with significant real estate holdings, making current California property tax planning an essential component of comprehensive estate plans for Sacramento’s substantial real estate-owning population.
1. Paul Kraft — Frank Kraft Attorneys at Law
Paul Kraft is one of Sacramento’s most highly regarded estate planning attorneys, with a practice at Frank Kraft that has served Central Valley families in comprehensive estate planning, trust administration, business succession planning, and Medi-Cal planning for many years. Kraft has been recognized by Super Lawyers Northern California in estate planning and probate for multiple consecutive years and has been included in Best Lawyers in America — reflecting sustained peer recognition from California’s legal community for the consistent quality and sophistication of his estate planning counsel.
Kraft’s practice encompasses the full range of California estate planning services — revocable living trusts, wills, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, irrevocable trusts, and sophisticated wealth transfer strategies — with particular emphasis on the California-specific planning considerations that distinguish estate planning in the Golden State from planning in other jurisdictions. His particular expertise in California property tax planning under Proposition 19 — understanding which transfers qualify for the limited parent-child reassessment exclusion that Proposition 19 preserves, how to structure transfers to maximize available exclusions, and how families with significant real estate holdings should adjust their estate plans in response to Proposition 19’s changes — reflects specialized California knowledge that has become essential for Sacramento estate planning following the 2021 implementation of Proposition 19’s provisions.
His deep familiarity with the California Probate Code and the specific planning strategies that Sacramento families can use to avoid probate — including the revocable living trust as the primary vehicle for probate avoidance, combined with proper asset titling and beneficiary designation coordination — provides his clients with comprehensive probate avoidance planning that protects Sacramento families from the time, expense, and public disclosure of California’s mandatory probate process.
2. Jennifer Sawday — TLD Law
Jennifer Sawday is a prominent California estate planning attorney at TLD Law whose practice focuses on comprehensive estate planning, trust administration, business succession planning, and special needs planning for California families throughout the Sacramento region and Southern California. Sawday has been recognized by Super Lawyers California in estate planning and probate and has been included in Best Lawyers in America — reflecting sustained national recognition for the quality and sophistication of her California estate planning practice.
Sawday’s practice encompasses revocable living trusts, wills, irrevocable trusts, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, special needs trusts, and trust administration — reflecting the comprehensive range of California estate planning services that Sacramento families need across different life stages and family circumstances. Her particular expertise in special needs planning — creating California-compliant special needs trusts that provide supplemental financial support for beneficiaries with disabilities while preserving their eligibility for Medi-Cal, SSI, and other government benefit programs — reflects specialized knowledge of critical importance for Sacramento families whose estate planning must account for a family member’s disability.
Her California-specific expertise in Medi-Cal planning — navigating the California Department of Health Care Services’ complex eligibility rules for long-term care Medi-Cal coverage, including the important changes that California’s elimination of Medi-Cal estate recovery for most recipients has created for California long-term care planning — reflects specialized knowledge of one of the most practically consequential areas of planning for Sacramento’s aging population.
3. Steven Fong — Fong and Fong APC
Steven Fong is a Sacramento estate planning and probate attorney at Fong and Fong whose practice has served the Sacramento Chinese-American community and the broader Sacramento multicultural population in comprehensive estate planning, probate administration, and trust administration for many years. Fong has been recognized by Super Lawyers Northern California in estate planning and probate and has developed a distinctive reputation for providing culturally sensitive estate planning services that respect the specific values, family structures, and wealth transfer traditions of Sacramento’s diverse multicultural communities.
His practice encompasses revocable living trusts, wills, powers of attorney, advance healthcare directives, irrevocable trusts, and trust and probate administration — providing comprehensive California estate planning services combined with specific cultural competence that allows Sacramento’s Asian-American, Chinese-American, and broader multicultural community to receive estate planning counsel that genuinely understands and respects their specific family values and wealth transfer objectives.
His bilingual service capability — providing estate planning services in both English and Cantonese — makes comprehensive California estate planning accessible to Sacramento’s Chinese-American community members whose primary language is not English, ensuring that language barriers do not prevent Sacramento families from accessing the estate planning services that every California family needs to protect their assets and their loved ones from the California probate process.
4. Douglas Stein — Weintraub Tobin Chediak Coleman Grodin
Douglas Stein is a prominent Sacramento estate planning attorney at Weintraub Tobin — one of Sacramento’s most established and respected business law firms — whose practice focuses on comprehensive estate planning, trust and estate administration, estate and gift tax planning, and business succession planning for high-net-worth Sacramento families and business owners. Stein has been recognized by Super Lawyers Northern California in estate planning and probate and has been included in Best Lawyers in America — reflecting sustained peer recognition for the quality and sophistication of his estate planning practice.
Stein’s practice encompasses sophisticated wealth transfer strategies of particular relevance to Sacramento’s established business and professional community — including irrevocable life insurance trusts, grantor retained annuity trusts, qualified personal residence trusts, spousal lifetime access trusts, and charitable planning vehicles that serve Sacramento families with significant estate planning needs. His mastery of the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer tax framework — and specifically the strategies that maximize available exemptions before potential future legislative changes reduce planning opportunities — provides Sacramento’s high-net-worth families with comprehensive tax-efficient wealth transfer planning.
His firm Weintraub Tobin’s substantial Sacramento resources and distinguished Northern California reputation provide estate planning clients with access to complementary expertise across corporate law, real estate law, and tax law that complex multi-faceted Sacramento estate planning matters frequently require in coordination with core estate planning documents.
5. Amie Clark — Clark Law Firm
Amie Clark is a Sacramento estate planning attorney whose practice focuses on providing accessible, comprehensive estate planning services to Sacramento families across the full economic spectrum — from young professionals establishing their first California estate plans to established Sacramento families with complex multigenerational wealth transfer needs. Clark has developed a reputation in the Sacramento legal community for combining thorough California estate planning expertise with genuine personal engagement with each client’s specific family circumstances and planning objectives.
Her practice’s particular focus on agricultural estate planning — addressing the specific planning needs of Sacramento Valley farm families and agricultural landowners whose estate planning must account for the unique characteristics of agricultural land ownership, farm operating entities, farm labor housing, and the complex interaction between Proposition 19 property tax rules and agricultural property transfers — reflects specialized local knowledge of one of the most distinctive estate planning contexts in the Sacramento region. Sacramento’s position at the heart of California’s most productive agricultural region creates significant demand for estate planning counsel that understands agricultural property transfer, and Clark’s practice fills this important regional need.
Her commitment to making comprehensive California estate planning accessible to families at every economic level reflects a genuine commitment to ensuring that the critical protection that properly structured California estate plans provide — particularly the avoidance of California’s mandatory and expensive probate process — is available to every Sacramento family that needs it.
