If you have searched for help settling an estate, you have probably found the national platforms: a personalized checklist, a document vault, an AI assistant, a "specialist" you can message. Several charge around $1,500.
They can be genuinely useful for organizing yourself. But there is a structural limit to what they can do in California, and it is worth understanding before you pay one.
The legal limit
California regulates who may prepare legal documents for compensation for another person who is representing themselves. Under Business and Professions Code section 6400 and following, that role is defined and registered: a Legal Document Assistant registers with the county clerk and posts a bond. Licensed attorneys (and their supervised staff) are the other route; certain legal-aid nonprofits and government employees acting in their official duties are separately exempt.
A national software platform is not registered in that role. So it can:
- give you information and blank forms
- organize your tasks and store your documents
- tell you what people in your situation generally do
and it cannot:
- prepare your documents for you
- file them with the superior court
- record a deed with the county recorder
- serve the notices California requires
That is not a gap in their product. It is the line the statute draws.
What it means in practice: the app produces a list, and you are still the one figuring out which form, filling it in, getting it notarized, standing in line at the recorder's office, and mailing the notices correctly. The hardest, highest-stakes part of the job is handed back to you at the moment you most need it done right.
The second problem: fifty states, one template
Estate settlement is state law. A platform serving all fifty states is, by necessity, generic — and California is one of the least generic states in the country:
- A 60-day notice to every beneficiary and every heir at law when a trust becomes irrevocable (Probate Code section 16061.7), which opens a 120-day contest window.
- 30 days for the custodian of a will to deliver it to the superior court after learning of the death (section 8200).
- Proposition 19, which governs whether an inherited home is reassessed at current market value, with its own filing requirements and a 150-day deadline to report a change in ownership to the county assessor.
- A Heggstad petition (section 850) to bring an asset that was left out of a trust back into it, without a full probate.
- Small-estate and simplified paths with date-bracketed dollar limits that change on a schedule — for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, the personal-property affidavit cap is $208,850, the small-value real-property affidavit is $69,625, and the simplified succession petition for a primary residence goes up to $750,000.
- 58 county recorders, each with its own recording requirements, cover sheets, and fees.
A checklist built for all fifty states will not tell you which of those apply to you, and it cannot file any of them for you.
What to actually ask a service
Whatever you choose, these four questions separate guidance from execution:
- Who prepares the documents — me or you?
- Will you file with the court and record with the county, or do I do that?
- Who serves the required notices, and how do you prove service?
- Are you registered in California, and under what authority?
If the answers are "you", "you", "you", and "we're a national platform, not a law firm" — you are buying a checklist. That may be all you need. It is not the same product as having the work done.
The alternative
A registered, bonded California Legal Document Assistant can do all four: prepare every document, file it with the right court, record the deed with the right county, and serve the notices — at your direction, at a flat fee, with you approving each step. When a matter genuinely needs legal advice or becomes contested, an LDA will tell you so and refer you to an attorney.
Want to see which California filings commonly apply in situations like yours? Answer five questions and get a personalized roadmap — free, no payment to check.