Living Trust Antioch CA: Keep Your East County Home Out of Probate in Martinez
Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.
Antioch is the second largest city in Contra Costa County, yet its probate cases are not heard at the East County courthouse in Pittsburg. They go to the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez. On Zillow's August 2026 typical Antioch home value of $591,983, statutory attorney and executor fees in a full probate would total $29,679.32. A funded living trust keeps the house out of that court for a $400 trust plus $100 deed.
Put the Antioch house in a revocable living trust and record a deed to the trust with the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder at 555 Escobar Street, Martinez. If the house stays in your own name, your family files in Martinez instead, at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse. A full probate on Zillow's typical Antioch value of $591,983 carries statutory attorney and executor fees of $29,679.32 under Probate Code §10810 and §10800. The trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Key Takeaways
The Contra Costa court assigns Antioch's ZIP codes, 94509 and 94531, to the Richard E. Arnason Justice Center in Pittsburg for local cases, but it files and hears every probate at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse, 725 Court Street, Martinez.
Zillow's typical Antioch value was $591,983 on August 31, 2026. A full probate on that value pays $14,839.66 to the attorney and $14,839.66 to the executor, $29,679.32 in all.
That typical value is under the $750,000 limit of the Probate Code §13151 primary residence petition, so many Antioch homes would go through a shorter court petition in Martinez instead of full probate. A trust needs neither.
Antioch is a general law city that takes $0.55 of the $1.10 per $1,000 transfer tax on a sale. Antioch's ordinance taxes only realty sold, measured without any loan that stays on the property (Antioch Municipal Code §§3-6.01, 3-6.02), so a deed into your own revocable trust with nothing paid owes no city tax.
Antioch's Rent Stabilization Ordinance has applied since November 11, 2022. A successor trustee who takes over a covered rental takes over its rent limits and notice rules.
Attorney-prepared trust: $400 single, $500 married couple, plus $100 per deed.
Contra Costa County Probate: Martinez, Not Pittsburg
Courthouse
Superior Court of California, County of Contra Costa, Wakefield Taylor Courthouse
Address
725 Court Street, Martinez, CA 94553
Phone
Courthouse (925) 608-1000; wills, trusts and estates information (925) 608-2613
Probate department
All probate, guardianship and conservatorship documents are filed and heard in this building. The Pittsburg courthouse that serves Antioch for other cases does not take them.
Hours
Clerk windows 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; court phones answered 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., Monday through Friday
The Contra Costa court sends most local cases to a courthouse by ZIP code. Its where to file table assigns Antioch's two ZIP codes, 94509 and 94531, to the Richard E. Arnason Justice Center at 1000 Center Drive in Pittsburg. That building was the courthouse of the former Delta Judicial District and still serves Antioch, Bay Point, Bethel Island, Brentwood, Byron, Discovery Bay, Knightsen, Oakley and Pittsburg. Its seven courtrooms hear family law, small claims, unlawful detainer, criminal and traffic cases, and some domestic violence and juvenile matters. Probate is not on that list. The same court page says, in one line, that all probate, guardianship and conservatorship documents are filed and heard at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse in Martinez, the county seat.
That split has two practical effects for an Antioch family. An Antioch estate that needs probate is a Martinez case from the first petition to the order for final distribution, however close the Pittsburg building is. And if a trust you leave owns an Antioch rental and your successor trustee ever has to evict a tenant, that unlawful detainer case is filed in the court serving the city where the dispute started, which for Antioch is Pittsburg. The trust keeps the house away from the probate court in Martinez; it does not move landlord cases.
At the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse the clerk windows open at 8:00 a.m. and close at 4:00 p.m. Papers placed in the court's drop box between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. are deemed filed that day, and the Court Records office is in Room 103, open 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Before a probate petition reaches the judge, the court's probate examiners check it and post calendar notes on the public portal, ordinarily 6 to 8 days ahead of the hearing; an item marked NEEDED should be answered by a filing before the hearing, and the court considers only pleadings filed at least five days before the hearing date. Zoom is the only platform the court uses for remote appearances.
The county that hears a probate is set by where the person lived, not where the death occurred. Probate Code §7051 sends a California resident's estate to the county of domicile, so an Antioch resident who dies at a hospital in another county still has a Contra Costa case. Even with a funded trust, one trip to the court clerk usually remains: Probate Code §8200 requires whoever holds the original will to deliver it to the clerk of the superior court within 30 days after learning of the death, and the court charges $50 to lodge it. The house in the trust needs no petition. Your successor trustee acts under the trust document itself. Our guide on how to avoid probate in California covers the rest of the estate.
Recording an Antioch Trust Deed in Martinez
Recorder
Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder, Recorder Division
Address
555 Escobar Street, Martinez, CA 94553. Deeds are recorded there or by mail. Questions about the PCOR and your assessed value go to the Contra Costa County Assessor.
$14.00 for the first page and $3.00 for each additional page on the county's posted fee schedule. The schedule's $17.00 first page fee applies only to the document types listed under Government Code §27388, such as quitclaim deeds and deeds of trust; a trust transfer deed is not on that list and pays the $14.00 fee. A deed whose legal description is not a complete lot in a recorded tract (metes and bounds, or part of a lot) also pays a $10.00 survey monument fee. Confirm the current fee with the recorder before mailing.
SB 2 fee
$75 per document under Government Code §27388.1, no more than $225 per transaction, unless an exemption is declared on the face of the document or on a cover page. The deed of the home you live in claims the owner-occupier exemption of §27388.1(a)(2), so the fee is usually not charged on it; a rental, second home or vacant lot pays it.
PCOR
File a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report (BOE-502-A) with the deed; without it the recorder may charge $20 more (Revenue and Taxation Code §480.3).
Signing the trust does not retitle the house; the deed does. An Antioch deed runs from you as owner to you as trustee of your trust, describes the parcel by legal description and Assessor's Parcel Number, and is recorded with the Clerk-Recorder on Escobar Street in Martinez, the same town as the probate court. The PCOR filed with it has a box for a transfer into a revocable trust. Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) says a transfer into a trust you can revoke is not a change in ownership, so the Assessor does not reappraise the house and your Proposition 13 base year value carries over unchanged. For Antioch that base is often recent: the Census Bureau's 2024 survey estimates that about 79% of owner households moved in during 2000 or later. Whatever your base year is, the trust deed keeps it. Our trust transfer deed guide explains the form.
Every Contra Costa deed also has a documentary transfer tax line. California City Finance's table effective December 1, 2025 lists Antioch as a general law city with a city rate of $0.55 and a county rate of $0.55 per $1,000 of value, $1.10 per $1,000 combined, matching the total in unincorporated Contra Costa County. The charter cities of the county are the exception; the same table shows Richmond and El Cerrito with taxes of their own on top of the county rate. For the county's tax, our deed states the exemption for a transfer into a living trust under Revenue and Taxation Code §11930. Antioch's ordinance taxes only realty sold, measured without any loan that stays on the property (Antioch Municipal Code §§3-6.01, 3-6.02), so a deed into your own revocable trust with nothing paid owes no city tax.
Most Antioch homes carry a loan. The same Census survey estimates that about 70% of owner-occupied homes in the city have a mortgage or similar debt, and owners often ask whether the deed into the trust needs the lender's consent. It does not. Federal law, 12 U.S.C. §1701j-3(d)(8), bars a lender from calling a loan on a home of fewer than five units because of a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary, so long as the transfer does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy. The loan stays in your name and the payments do not change. Our office prepares the deed and the PCOR for $100 per property, and you record them. From January 1, 2027, AB 2224 (Stats. 2026, ch. 292) sets the Government Code §27361 base recording fee at $15.00 for the first page and $4.00 for each additional page, with county add-on fees still charged on top, so the county's posted totals will change.
What Probate Would Cost on a Typical Antioch Home
Zillow's Home Value Index put the typical Antioch home value at $591,983 at August 31, 2026, about 1.4% below its level a year earlier. The table uses that figure. Under Probate Code §10810 the estate's attorney is paid 4% of the first $100,000 of the gross estate, 3% of the next $100,000 and 2% of the next $800,000, and Probate Code §10800 pays the executor the same amount. Gross means before the mortgage, so an Antioch house with a large loan produces the same fees as one owned free and clear.
Court filing fee: $435 for the first petition (statewide fee; Contra Costa adds no local surcharge).
Probate referee: one-tenth of one percent of the appraised property (Probate Code §8961), about $592 on this home.
Creditor period: four months after letters issue (Probate Code §9100), so no estate closes sooner.
Antioch is a city where the §13151 shortcut is a real possibility. For deaths on or after April 1, 2025, Probate Code §13151 lets the heirs take a primary residence worth $750,000 or less by a court petition instead of a full probate. Zillow's August 2026 typical values were $537,338 in ZIP code 94509 and $660,621 in 94531, both under the limit, although a larger house in 94531 can pass it with less than $90,000 to spare. The petition is not a private process: it is filed at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse with the same $435 fee, and the heirs and devisees must be given notice. It reaches only the residence. Other assets left in the decedent's own name are handled separately, and the small estate affidavit of Probate Code §13100 stops at $208,850. A trust makes the limit irrelevant, because the house is never in the decedent's name. Our California probate fees guide explains each charge, and the trust costs $400 for one person or $500 for a couple.
Antioch Homes, Rentals and Hillside Fire Zones
An owner city, and the second largest in the county
The Census Bureau estimated Antioch's population at 118,958 on July 1, 2025, up from an April 2020 estimates base of 115,305. Among the county's cities only Concord was larger. Its 2024 American Community Survey counts about 64% of Antioch's occupied homes as owner-occupied (24,245 of 37,795) and about 16% of residents as 65 or older. Those numbers point to the two jobs a trust does here. It moves the house at death without a court case in Martinez, and it lets a successor trustee manage the house and trust accounts if you lose capacity, without a conservatorship petition, which the Contra Costa court also files and hears at the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse.
A city of detached houses from the 1970s through the 1990s
The same survey estimates that 30,535 of Antioch's 39,879 housing units, about 77%, are detached single-family houses, and that more than half of all units (about 56%) were built between 1970 and 1999. About a quarter were built in 2000 or later. For most Antioch families the house is the largest asset, and it is the asset that ends up in probate when no deed was ever recorded. Spouses sometimes rely on how the deed is worded instead. Under Civil Code §682.1, community property that the deed expressly declares to carry a right of survivorship passes to the surviving spouse without administration at the first death. It does nothing at the second death: the survivor then owns the house alone, and unless it has been deeded into a trust, the children face a petition or a probate in Martinez.
Rentals under Antioch's Rent Stabilization Ordinance
Antioch adopted a Rent Stabilization Ordinance that took effect on November 11, 2022; it is in Chapter 1 of Title 11 of the Antioch Municipal Code, beginning at §11-1.01. For a covered unit, a rent increase may be no more than 3% or 60% of the 12 month change in the San Francisco, Oakland and Hayward consumer price index, whichever is less. The City's Rent Program posts the limit for each period; for increases effective September 14 to November 10, 2026 it was 2.04%. Rent cannot go up again until 12 months after the last increase. A landlord must give a City notice to a new tenant at the start of the tenancy and again with every rent increase, and an increase given without it is not effective. The City is building a rental unit registry into its landlord business license process, but says the registration requirement is not yet in effect. Separate City ordinances protect tenants against harassment and retaliation (Ordinance No. 2232-C-S) and add just cause rules (Ordinance No. 2240-C-S).
Deeding an Antioch rental into your trust changes none of this. The leases and the ordinance stay with the property after it moves into the trust, and if you die or cannot manage it, your successor trustee becomes the landlord who must follow the rent limit and give the notices. Keep a folder with the leases, the date and amount of each increase, and copies of the notices you gave. Note also that the City's Rent Program answers questions but does not decide whether a particular unit is covered, and its staff do not give legal advice.
ADUs can change the answer for a single house
The City's Rent Program lists, among the units state law requires it to exempt, any unit that first received a certificate of occupancy after February 1, 1995, and any unit that does not share a parcel with another dwelling unit, giving a single-family home without an ADU as its example. The City's planning division describes detached, attached and conversion ADUs, and junior ADUs of no more than 500 square feet built inside an existing single-family house. An owner who adds an ADU to an older Antioch lot therefore has two dwelling units on one parcel, and the City's exemption example no longer fits; get advice on whether either unit is covered before you rent one out, and leave your successor trustee a note of the answer. The trust deed covers the whole parcel, house and ADU together, so no second deed is needed.
Mobile homes
The Census Bureau's 2024 survey estimates about 639 mobile homes in Antioch. The City's rent ordinance lists mobile homes located in mobile home parks among the units it does not cover. If you own a mobile home, list it separately in your questionnaire and tell us whether the land under it is yours or a rented space, so that we can confirm how the home is titled and how it should be moved into the trust. A deed recorded for a different parcel will not carry it.
Fire hazard zones along Antioch's southern edge
CAL FIRE's new fire hazard severity zone maps for Contra Costa County show moderate and high zones as well as very high zones; the 2011 maps they replace showed only very high zones. Reading the Antioch map in March 2025, Save Mount Diablo, a land conservation group, reported high hazard along the city's southern and southwestern borders, including almost the entire Sand Creek area, very high hazard on large undeveloped parts of southwest Antioch, and very high hazard in some existing neighborhoods, including those along Southwood Way. The Contra Costa County Fire Protection District listed an Antioch map among the local responsibility area maps it presented at a public meeting on April 1, 2025, before adoption, and as the district's notice summarized Government Code §51179, a local agency must designate the zones by ordinance within 120 days and may not lower a zone or remove an area. A zone follows the land, not the owner, so recording the trust deed does not change it. What the trust changes is who can act after a fire. With the house titled in the trust, your successor trustee can deal with the insurer, the lender and a contractor if you cannot. After the deed records, ask your agent to add the trust to the homeowner's policy.
Passing the house to a child under Proposition 19
Many Antioch parents leave the house to a child through the trust. Proposition 19 lets a child keep the parent's assessed value on a family home only if the house was the parent's principal residence and becomes the child's principal residence, and the child files for the homeowners' exemption within one year of the transfer. The value limit is the current taxable value plus $1,044,586 for transfers from February 16, 2025 to February 15, 2027, according to the State Board of Equalization. At Antioch's typical value of $591,983 the house is worth less than that adjustment by itself, so a child who moves in and files on time would usually keep the full base. A house the child rents out instead of living in does not meet the principal residence condition. The trust can say who receives the house; it cannot change that tax rule, so the choice belongs in the planning conversation.
Setting Up and Funding Your Antioch Trust
Answer the questionnaire onlineWork through the questions from Antioch on your own schedule: who is in your family, each Contra Costa parcel you own, any rental unit or ADU, your accounts, and who should step in as successor trustee. Your answers save as you go.
Attorney prepares your documentsRozsa Gyene, a California attorney, drafts the trust, pour-over will, durable power of attorney, advance health care directive and certification of trust from your answers and reviews the full set before it is delivered.
Sign before a notarySign the trust and the power of attorney in front of a California notary public, in Antioch or anywhere in the state. The pour-over will is signed in front of two witnesses, following the signing instructions.
Record the deed in MartinezRecord the deed to your Antioch home with the Contra Costa County Clerk-Recorder, 555 Escobar Street, Martinez, in person or by mail, together with a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report. The home you live in claims the SB 2 owner-occupier exemption, so the $75 fee is usually not charged; a rental pays it.
Retitle bank and brokerage accountsShow each bank, credit union and brokerage firm the certification of trust and have the account put in your name as trustee, or add the trust as payable on death beneficiary where the institution allows it.
Review beneficiary designationsPensions, 401(k) and 403(b) plans, IRAs and life insurance follow their beneficiary forms, not the trust. Make sure each form names the person or the trust you want, with a contingent beneficiary.
Advance health care directive with HIPAA authorization
Certification of trust
Assignment of personal property
Personal property memorandum
Funding instructions
An Antioch trust costs $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple. The deed for your Antioch home, or for a rental or any other Contra Costa parcel, is $100 per property, and you record it with the Clerk-Recorder in Martinez. You can speak with the attorney's office directly at (818) 337-4071, and the documents can be signed before any California notary in Contra Costa County. For how that price compares, see what a California living trust costs.
Antioch Living Trust Questions
Where does probate happen for someone who lived in Antioch?
At the Wakefield Taylor Courthouse, 725 Court Street, Martinez, CA 94553. The Contra Costa court files and hears all probate, guardianship and conservatorship matters there, even though it assigns Antioch's ZIP codes to the Richard E. Arnason Justice Center in Pittsburg for other kinds of cases. Questions about wills, trusts and estates go to (925) 608-2613. A house held in a funded trust needs no petition in either building.
Could an Antioch house use the $750,000 primary residence petition instead of full probate?
Often, if the owner died on or after April 1, 2025 and the house was the owner's primary residence. Probate Code §13151 allows a court petition for a primary residence worth $750,000 or less. Zillow's typical Antioch value of $591,983 is under that limit, and so are its August 2026 typical values for ZIP codes 94509 and 94531. The petition is still a case in Martinez, with a $435 filing fee and notice to heirs. A house already in a trust needs no petition.
What would full probate cost on a typical Antioch home?
On Zillow's typical Antioch value of $591,983, Probate Code §10810 gives the attorney $14,839.66 and §10800 gives the executor the same amount, $29,679.32 together, figured on the gross value before any mortgage. The $435 filing fee and a probate referee commission of about $592 come on top. The trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Does Antioch charge its own transfer tax when I deed my house to my trust?
Antioch is a general law city. Its $0.55 per $1,000 share is part of the $1.10 per $1,000 total that applies to a sale in the city, not a second tax on top. Antioch's ordinance taxes only realty sold, measured without any loan that stays on the property (Antioch Municipal Code §§3-6.01, 3-6.02), so a deed into your own revocable trust with nothing paid owes no city tax.
Will my mortgage lender object to the deed into my trust?
It should not. Federal law, 12 U.S.C. §1701j-3(d)(8), bars a lender from enforcing a due-on-sale clause on a home of fewer than five units because of a transfer into an inter vivos trust in which the borrower is and remains a beneficiary, where the transfer does not relate to a transfer of rights of occupancy. The loan stays in place and you keep making the same payments.
I rent out an older Antioch property. What should my successor trustee know?
Antioch's Rent Stabilization Ordinance took effect November 11, 2022. For covered units it limits a rent increase to 3% or 60% of the regional consumer price index, whichever is less, and the City posts the current figure: 2.04% for increases effective September 14 to November 10, 2026. A landlord must give tenants the City's notices, or the increase is not effective. A single-family home with no ADU on the lot is on the City's list of exempt units. Leave your successor trustee the leases, the rent history and copies of the notices.
What does it cost to record an Antioch trust deed in Contra Costa County?
The county's posted schedule lists $14.00 for the first page and $3.00 for each additional page, plus $20 if no Preliminary Change of Ownership Report is filed with the deed. The $75 SB 2 fee is usually not charged on a deed moving your own home into your trust, because the deed claims the owner-occupier exemption of Government Code §27388.1(a)(2); rentals, second homes and vacant land pay it, up to $225 per transaction. Confirm the current fee with the recorder before mailing.
