Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.
Calabasas has no probate court. An estate left outside a trust is probated at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, where statutory fees on a typical $1,688,461 Calabasas home come to $59,769.22 and every filing joins a public case file. An attorney-prepared living trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a couple.
Sign a revocable living trust, then deed your Calabasas home to yourself as trustee and record that deed in Los Angeles County. A house still titled in your own name when you die, worth Zillow's typical Calabasas figure of $1,688,461 (August 2026), goes through probate downtown at Stanley Mosk, where Probate Code §10810 and §10800 set attorney plus executor fees at $59,769.22. Our trust is $400 for a single person and $500 for a couple.
Calabasas is its own city, but it has no courthouse that hears probate, and the San Fernando Valley courthouses, Van Nuys among them, do not take probate matters either. Under Local Rule 2.3 of the Los Angeles Superior Court, estates, trusts, guardianships and conservatorships belong to the Central District, which is why nearly every county probate ends up at Stanley Mosk on North Hill Street, roughly 30 miles east of Calabasas along the 101. The rule's exception is the North District: the Antelope Valley Courthouse in Lancaster still accepts North District filings for decedents, wards and trusts; since February 2, 2026 those cases are heard at Mosk too.
So a Calabasas estate is handled downtown from start to finish: a petition asking for letters, notice published in a newspaper, a probate referee's appraisal of the inventory, at least four months for creditors to make claims, then a petition to distribute. Filing the opening petition costs $435 under the statewide schedule in effect since January 1, 2026. If the heirs fight and the case needs a long trial, it moves again: since September 15, 2025 the court hears long-cause probate trials in Department 64 of the Metropolitan Courthouse, 1945 S. Hill Street.
Apart from the fees, there is the file itself, which anyone can look up. The petition names the heirs, and the inventory and appraisal lists what the decedent owned and what it was worth. A trust is not filed with any court while the trust is administered without a dispute. Your successor trustee steps in, settles debts, sends the notices the Probate Code calls for, and records a deed giving the house to the people you named. When a bank or title company needs proof of the trustee's authority, the trustee hands over a certification of trust under Probate Code §18100.5, which shows the trustee's powers without showing who inherits what. Our article on Los Angeles County probate judges and departments describes the downtown probate courtrooms.
A trust only controls what it owns, and a Calabasas house becomes trust property when a deed saying so is recorded. You sign as the current owner; the grantee is you again, now as trustee. The PCOR that travels with the deed has a box for transfers into a revocable trust, and checking it tells the Assessor this is the kind of transfer Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) excludes from a change in ownership. Your base year value under Proposition 13 carries over unchanged, with no supplemental assessment. More on this in our living trust property tax guide.
The $75 SB 2 charge rarely applies to the home you live in. Each of our trust transfer deeds states the owner-occupier exemption of Government Code §27388.1(a)(2) on its face, so a deed of your own residence into your own trust usually goes through without the fee. A Calabasas condominium you rent out, a vacation place or a vacant hillside lot is different: the fee is due, with $225 as the most charged for one transaction. Transfer tax on the trust deed is $0.00, since there is no sale, and the deed cites Revenue and Taxation Code §11930; the county wants that exemption written on the document itself.
We draft the deed and fill in the PCOR for $100 per parcel; recording is your step, in person at Van Nuys or another counter, or through the mail. Budget for a change at the start of 2027. AB 2224 (Stats. 2026, ch. 292) lifts the statewide base fee in Government Code §27361(a) from $10 to $15.00 for page one and from $3 to $4.00 per added page from January 1, 2027, and the county's own add-ons still apply. In a notice dated September 24, 2026, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder said it plans to charge the new base on documents it receives on or after January 1, 2027, pending Board approval and notice, and to drop several small charges (penalty print, nonconforming page, referencing, indexing). No revised county totals were posted as of October 6, 2026. The form itself is covered in our trust transfer deed guide.
Zillow's Home Value Index put the typical Calabasas home value at $1,688,461 for August 2026 (Zillow research data through August 31, 2026, City of Calabasas series). That figure is used below. The attorney's statutory fee under Probate Code §10810 is a sliding percentage of the gross estate (4% on the first $100,000, then 3% on the next $100,000, 2% on the following $800,000, and 1% on the next $9 million), and under §10800 the executor earns an equal fee. Gross value counts the whole house; a mortgage or equity line on a Calabasas home does not reduce it.
Run your own numbers in the probate cost calculator
The statutory fee covers ordinary services only; under Probate Code §10811 the court can allow extraordinary fees on top, and California Rules of Court, rule 7.703 lists the sale of estate property as one example. Our California probate fees guide walks through each charge. The two simplified procedures are no help at Calabasas prices. For deaths on or after April 1, 2025, a Probate Code §13100 affidavit is limited to estates of $208,850, and the §13151 petition to a primary residence of $750,000. Set those figures beside a $400 trust for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Calabasas incorporated on April 5, 1991, and the 2020 Census counted 23,241 residents. Annexations have since brought the city to about 13.6 square miles; Mont Calabasas on Las Virgenes Road, for example, was unincorporated county land until the city annexed it in 2011. The land history is much older. Miguel Leonis acquired Rancho El Escorpion in the early 1870s and went on to hold more than 18,000 acres across Southern California, and the Leonis Adobe on Calabasas Road, whose adobe origins date to 1844 and which he remodeled in 1872, anchors Old Town today. The city's first subdivision, Park Moderne near Calabasas High School, was built on land traded off as part of Sam Cooper Jr.'s homestead in 1928.
That history shows up in deeds. An older parcel can carry a long metes and bounds description or recorded easements, while a lot in a planned community is usually described by tract and lot number. The trust transfer deed must repeat the legal description from your current vesting deed exactly. A Calabasas mailing address is not proof that a parcel is inside the city, either: the Malibu Hindu Temple on Las Virgenes Road, for example, sits in unincorporated Calabasas, which is county territory. For a trust that rarely matters, because the county records the deed, keeps the tax roll and runs the probate court either way, but the deed should identify the parcel by its Assessor's Parcel Number, not by the street address alone.
Calabasas is made up of named residential communities, usually listed by the main road each opens onto: Calabasas Park Estates, Calabasas Hills and The Oaks off Parkway Calabasas; Mulwood, Calabasas Highlands and Park Moderne off Mulholland Highway and Valley Circle Boulevard; Mountain View Estates and Mont Calabasas off Las Virgenes Road; and Saratoga Hills and Steeplechase off Lost Hills Road. Some are gated; the City notes, for example, that Freedom Park sits within the gated community of Braewood, though it is a public park. Hidden Hills, next door, is a separate gated city with its own government.
Two local layers of charges sit on many of these parcels. Los Angeles County created Landscape Maintenance District 22 on December 31, 1968, at the request of the corporation that developed the Calabasas Park Homeowner Association; it is funded by an ad valorem tax and pays for Calabasas Lake, Association Park and nearby parkways and medians. The City also maintains four Landscape Lighting Act Districts (22, 24, 27 and 32), funded by special assessments voted on by the parcel owners in each district; for District 22 the county collects the assessment from owners in its member associations and passes it to the City. A deed into your revocable trust does not add or remove any of these charges, and it does not change your duties under the association's CC&Rs. What it should change is the association's records: after the deed records, send the management company a copy, or your certification of trust, so that assessment statements, ballots and notices are addressed to you as trustee and, later, to your successor trustee. A successor trustee who cannot get through the gate or into the association's portal will also have trouble paying the dues on time, so list the gate and management contacts in your trust binder.
The City's housing page counts about 9,200 housing units as of 2020. More than three-quarters are single-family homes, attached or detached, and apartments and condominiums make up nearly a quarter. The 2020 Census found 70.2% of occupied homes owner-occupied. A condominium moves into a trust the same way a house does, by recorded deed, and the association should be told the same way.
Calabasas also has one mobile home park, Calabasas Village Mobile Estates on Mulholland Highway, with 211 spaces. A manufactured home on a rented space is usually registered and titled with the California Department of Housing and Community Development rather than recorded with the county recorder, so it goes into a trust by an HCD title transfer, not by a deed. If the home has been installed on a permanent foundation, HCD registration ends. Tell us which applies when you complete the questionnaire, because the funding instructions differ.
The Woolsey Fire started on November 8, 2018, and overnight into November 9 it crossed U.S. Route 101 near Calabasas and spread into Agoura Hills. It burned 96,949 acres across Los Angeles and Ventura counties and destroyed 1,643 structures. The City later wrote that the fire "greatly impacted our community and its residents"; Grape Arbor Park, off the 101, was among the places damaged and was rebuilt by 2020. CAL FIRE published the current local responsibility area fire hazard severity zone map for Calabasas on March 24, 2025, and the City notes that property in a high or very high zone may be subject to California Building Code Chapter 7A and the defensible space rules of Public Resources Code §4291.
A trust does not change fire insurance or building rules, but it decides who can act on them. After the deed records, ask your insurer to list the trust, or you as trustee, on the homeowner's policy, and keep the declarations page with the trust binder. If a fire or an evacuation comes while you are ill or traveling, your successor trustee can deal with the insurer, the association and contractors for the trust-owned house, and the durable power of attorney covers anything left outside the trust.
The City's 2025 Annual Comprehensive Financial Report lists the Las Virgenes Unified School District as the largest employer in Calabasas, followed by The Cheesecake Factory and Harbor Freight Tools, both headquartered in the city. A teacher's pension, a 403(b) or 457 plan, a 401(k), deferred compensation and group life insurance do not pass under a trust or a will. They pass by the beneficiary form on file with the plan, so part of preparing a Calabasas trust is checking each designation against the trust, including the contingent beneficiary. Shares held in a brokerage account do go into the trust, by retitling the account.
Probate and property tax are separate problems, and a trust solves only the first. Proposition 19 lets children keep a parent's low taxable value on the family home only when one of them moves in as a primary residence and files for the homeowners' exemption inside a year. Even then the benefit has a ceiling: for transfers between February 16, 2025 and February 15, 2027, it covers the parent's taxable value plus $1,044,586 and no more. At Calabasas prices the cap often matters. As an illustration only: if a parent's taxable value were $400,000 and the home were worth the typical $1,688,461, the exclusion would cover value up to $1,444,586, and the remaining $243,875 would be added to the taxable value, giving the child a new taxable value of $643,875. A home no child moves into is reassessed at market value. File form BOE-19-P with the county Assessor no later than three years after the transfer. Our Prop 19 inheritance guide has the details.
Pricing is $400 for an individual trust and $500 for a married couple, and each deed (the Calabasas house, a rental, a cabin) adds $100. Questions go to the attorney's office at (818) 337-4071. Our office is in Burbank, yet the whole process works without a visit; you sign in front of any California notary. For how this compares with other routes, see what a California living trust costs.
Not in Calabasas. Calabasas is in Los Angeles County, and under Los Angeles Superior Court Local Rule 2.3 probate, trust, guardianship and conservatorship cases are filed in the Central District. Almost all Los Angeles County probate cases are heard at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, 111 N. Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles, about 30 miles from Calabasas by the 101. The San Fernando Valley courthouses, such as Van Nuys, do not hear probate. A Calabasas home held in a funded living trust passes to your beneficiaries without a court filing.
Using Zillow's typical Calabasas value of $1,688,461 (August 31, 2026), the attorney's fee under Probate Code §10810 is $29,884.61 and the executor's fee under §10800 matches it, $59,769.22 between them. Add the $435 court fee for the first petition and roughly $1,688 for the probate referee. A living trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Only a primary residence worth $750,000 or less qualifies, and only for deaths on or after April 1, 2025 (Probate Code §13151). The typical Calabasas value of $1,688,461 is more than twice that limit. A home that does qualify still needs a court petition in Los Angeles, notice to every heir and a hearing date.
With the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. Its main office is at 12400 Imperial Highway, Norwalk, and three branches also record documents: Van Nuys (14340 W. Sylvan Street), LAX/Courthouse (11701 S. La Cienega Boulevard, 6th floor) and Lancaster (44509 16th Street West, Suite 101). Van Nuys is the closest of these to Calabasas. Deeds can also be mailed to the Document Analysis and Recording Section, P.O. Box 1250, Norwalk, CA 90651-1250. There is no recorder office in Calabasas.
Not on a deed into your trust. Calabasas is not one of the five Los Angeles County cities with their own higher rate (Culver City, Los Angeles, Pomona, Redondo Beach and Santa Monica, according to the Registrar-Recorder), so a Calabasas sale pays the standard $0.55 per $500, which California City Finance shows split equally between the county and the city. Your trust deed pays nothing at all, because it transfers to yourself as trustee for no price; it shows $0.00 and cites the exemption in Revenue and Taxation Code §11930.
Your ownership through the trust does not end your obligations under the CC&Rs, and the county records the deed without asking the association. Read your CC&Rs for any notice requirement, then send the association a copy of the recorded deed or your certification of trust so statements and ballots go to you as trustee, and later to your successor trustee. Landscape district charges, such as the Landscape Lighting Act District 22 assessment the county collects from owners in its member associations, stay with the parcel.
No. Moving your home into a revocable trust is excluded from the definition of a change in ownership by Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d), so the Assessor keeps your Proposition 13 base year value; the PCOR recorded with the deed is where you say so. The parcel's other charges, such as the Landscape Maintenance District 22 tax or a Landscape Lighting Act District assessment, continue as before.
No. The trust keeps the house out of court; reassessment is a separate rule. A child inherits your taxable value under Proposition 19 only by moving in, making the home a primary residence and claiming the homeowners' exemption inside one year, and for transfers dated February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027 the protected amount stops at your taxable value plus $1,044,586. At Calabasas values, part of the home's value can be reassessed even when a child moves in. File form BOE-19-P with the county Assessor no later than three years after the transfer.
Checked October 6, 2026. Fees and addresses change; confirm with the office before you file or record.
Fill in the questionnaire at home, sign before a notary in the West Valley, and record your deed with Los Angeles County.
Law Offices of Rozsa Gyene, 3500 W. Olive Ave., Suite 300, Burbank, CA 91505. California State Bar #208356.
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California State Bar #208356 | Licensed Since 2000
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