Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.
Stanislaus County handles estates and trusts at the City Towers Courthouse, 801 10th Street, in downtown Modesto. Zillow put the typical Modesto home at $442,564 on August 31, 2026; a full probate of that house carries statutory attorney and executor fees of $23,702.56. Deeding it into a funded living trust keeps it out of that building, for a $400 trust plus a $100 deed.
A Modesto house stays out of probate only after a deed moving it into your living trust is recorded with the Stanislaus County Clerk-Recorder at 1021 I Street. Left in your own name, a home at Zillow's typical Modesto value of $442,564 (August 31, 2026) faces Probate Code §10810 attorney and executor fees totaling $23,702.56 in a full probate, or at minimum a §13151 court petition if it was your primary residence. Our attorney-prepared trust is $400 for one person and $500 for a married couple.
Stanislaus County splits its probate work between two downtown buildings, and the split trips people up. The Main Courthouse at 800 11th Street also has a probate clerk, at its first floor I Street entrance, but that office handles only guardianships, LPS mental health conservatorships and adoptions. A decedent's estate, a trust petition or a probate conservatorship of an adult belongs to the Civil and Probate Division in the City Towers Courthouse at 801 10th Street, where the Civil Clerk's Office sits on the fourth floor and the division's courtrooms occupy the fourth and sixth floors. Every Modesto estate that goes through court, including one started with a §13151 petition, is filed there.
Before any hearing, a probate examiner reads the file. The court says its goal is to post these probate notes five calendar days before the hearing date, and any defect the examiner lists must be fixed before the petition is approved. Papers that cure a technical defect should be filed no later than five court days before the hearing, which leaves a family and its lawyer a short window to react. Each note ends by saying whether anyone must appear at the hearing. The notes are public, so anyone can read what an estate is asking for and what is missing from it.
The court has announced a change of remote appearance systems for civil and probate cases. Remote hearings through October 30, 2026 use VCourt, a telephone appearance system, and remote appearances on or after November 2, 2026 use UDC, which the court describes as a digital courtroom appearance system scheduled through its own link. Check the court's remote appearances page for the system that applies on your hearing date. None of this touches a trust administration, which is handled by your successor trustee at a kitchen table rather than on a court calendar.
The court's probate page also names the probate referee assigned to Stanislaus County, who appraises non-cash estate assets in a probate. The referee's commission is one-tenth of one percent of the value appraised (Probate Code §8961). A successor trustee may hire an appraiser for a date-of-death value, but no referee is appointed and no commission is set by statute.
Signing your trust does not move the house. A recorded deed from you, as owner, to you, as trustee, does that. The Clerk-Recorder's checklist for a deed that transfers real property asks for the grantor and grantee names, a legal description such as lot and tract, the Assessor's Parcel Number, a documentary transfer tax declaration, the "recording requested by" and "when recorded mail to" blocks, a mailing address for future tax bills, a statement of whether the land is inside a city or in the unincorporated county, and the owner's signature acknowledged before a notary. The recorder's office states that it is barred from giving legal advice or preparing documents, so it will tell you whether a deed can be recorded, not whether it does what your trust needs.
Stanislaus County's documentary transfer tax is $0.55 for each $500 of value, and it applies when realty is sold for something of value. The county's own guidance names "placing real property in a trust for the benefit of the grantor (revocable trust)" as a transfer that is not a sale, so the declaration on your trust deed shows $0.00, with Revenue and Taxation Code §11930 cited on its face. Under Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) the same transfer is not a change in ownership, and the PCOR filed with the deed tells the Assessor to keep your Proposition 13 base year value. Our guide to living trust property tax rules covers this in more depth.
A few county details are easy to miss. When no transfer tax is paid, the county's transfer instructions add a real estate fraud fee, which the fee schedule lists at $3.00. The SB 2 exemption is declared on the county's cover page with exemptions, and that page states that an additional page fee applies to it. Original documents are mailed back to the "when recorded mail to" address roughly four to six weeks after recording, once the images are checked. Our office prepares the deed and the PCOR for a separate $100 per property; you record them in person on I Street or by mail, and that recording is what funds the home into the trust. Base page fees rise statewide on January 1, 2027, when AB 2224 (Stats. 2026, ch. 292) sets the Government Code §27361 fee at $15.00 for the first page and $4.00 for each additional page; county add-on fees come on top of that base.
Our trust transfer deed guide walks through the deed itself.
Zillow's Home Value Index put the typical Modesto home value at $442,564 as of August 31, 2026 (Zillow research data, city series). The table applies the statutory schedule in Probate Code §10810 to that figure: 4% of the first $100,000, 3% of the next $100,000 and 2% of the next $800,000. The schedule runs on the gross value of the estate, so a mortgage on the house does not lower it, and Probate Code §10800 allows the executor a second fee of the same size.
Run your own numbers in the probate cost calculator
Modesto differs from coastal cities in one way that matters. Because the typical home here is worth less than $750,000, a house that was the owner's primary residence can often pass by a Probate Code §13151 petition when the death is on or after April 1, 2025. That route is not subject to the §10810 percentage schedule above, but it is still a petition filed at City Towers, with the $435 fee, at least 40 days of waiting after the death, notice to heirs, probate notes and a hearing. It does nothing for a rental duplex, a second parcel or a house that was not the owner's residence. Bank and brokerage accounts outside the trust fall under the separate small estate limit of Probate Code §13100, $208,850 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025. Our California probate fees guide explains each charge. A $400 trust plus a $100 deed avoids all of it, or a $500 trust plus a $100 deed for a married couple.
Modesto is the county seat and the largest city in Stanislaus County, with 218,464 residents in the 2020 Census. That count found 76,476 housing units, 73,959 of them occupied; 56.1% of occupied homes were owner occupied and 43.9% were rented. Two numbers from the same census shape how a Modesto trust should be written. One household in five (22.1%) was a single person, and 10.3% of households were a person aged 65 or older living alone. For a single owner, the successor trustee named in the trust is the person who can step in, pay the property tax and insurance and later sell or distribute the house without a conservatorship or a probate case. The durable power of attorney in the package covers accounts left outside the trust. Owners who rent out a second house should have the lease and the security deposit assigned to the trust along with the deed, and the trust should say who manages the rental if the owner cannot.
The City of Modesto runs an ADU Express Program: a one-hour appointment at which city staff review complete accessory dwelling unit and junior unit plans, and qualifying projects may be approved the same day. The Planning and Building counter is at City Hall, 1010 10th Street, Suite 3100. A detached or attached ADU sits on the same parcel as the house, so the single trust transfer deed covers both. A junior accessory dwelling unit carries an extra step. Before the city signs off on the building permit, the owners record a Declaration of Deed Restriction with the Clerk-Recorder at 1021 I Street. The declaration requires the owner to live in either the main house or the junior unit, bars selling the junior unit separately from the house, and states that it runs with the land and binds the owner's heirs, personal representatives, successors and assigns.
The city's form anticipates trusts. It defines "Property Owner" to include everyone with record title and "all heirs or beneficiaries named in a valid declaration of trust holding title to the Property." So the restriction survives the deed into your trust and the transfer to your children. If you have a junior unit, the trust should address who will live in the house after you, and the recorded restriction and the city's sign-off belong in the folder your successor trustee will use.
Modesto sits in irrigated farmland between the Tuolumne and Stanislaus Rivers, and E. & J. Gallo Winery, based here, is the largest employer on the city's economic development list of large Modesto employers. An orchard or field outside the city limits lies in the unincorporated county. Each such parcel needs its own deed into the trust and its own PCOR, and the Clerk-Recorder requires the deed to say whether the land lies inside a city or in the unincorporated area. A rural parcel that is not the owner's residence generally pays the $75 SB 2 fee. A farm owned through an LLC, a partnership or a family corporation is not deeded at all; the trust takes an assignment of the membership interest, partnership interest or shares, and the entity keeps title to the land.
The trust avoids probate on that land. It does not avoid reassessment when children inherit. Proposition 19 limits the parent and child exclusion to a family home or a family farm, and the Board of Equalization treats a family farm as real property under cultivation, used for pasture or grazing, or used to produce an agricultural commodity. The exclusion is capped at the taxable value plus the indexed $1 million amount, which is $1,044,586 for transfers from February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027, and it must be claimed on form BOE-19-P with the Stanislaus County Assessor. Writing the trust so that the successor trustee knows which parcels may qualify, and who is meant to keep farming them, is part of planning for an orchard. Our Prop 19 inheritance guide covers the home side of the rule.
Dry Creek runs west through Modesto to meet the Tuolumne River downtown, beside the Gallo winery, and its most flood prone stretch is the La Loma area. Flooding there usually comes when very high flows on the Tuolumne back water up into the creek. CBS Sacramento reported in February 2025 that the City of Modesto was holding public meetings on a $450,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency grant for a flood study: a hydraulic study along the Tuolumne River that would weigh ways to cut flood losses, such as elevating homes, and that the study was expected to take 32 months. When the deed is recorded, tell your homeowner's insurer and any flood insurer that the house is now held by you as trustee and ask that the trust be added to the policy. Keep the policy numbers with your trust papers so a successor trustee can file a claim on a house the trust owns.
The same list names Stanislaus County, Modesto City Schools, Doctors Medical Center, Memorial Medical Center, the City of Modesto and Modesto Junior College among the larger employers. Pensions, 401(k), 403(b) and 457 plans and group life insurance from those jobs pass by beneficiary designation, outside both the trust and the will. The trust does not change them, so check each account and confirm that the people named match the plan in the trust.
The same Clerk-Recorder and Assessor serve every parcel in Stanislaus County, so a rental in Turlock and a house in Modesto are recorded at the same I Street counter, each with its own deed and PCOR. Modesto is close to the San Joaquin, Merced and Tuolumne county lines, and land in those counties is deeded the same way but recorded with that county's recorder. A trust that holds the Modesto house but not the cabin or the second parcel across a county line leaves that property for a probate in the other county.
The package is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple. A deed for your Modesto home, or for any other parcel, is $100 per property. You can reach the attorney at (818) 337-4071, and the documents are signed before any California notary. For how this compares with other options, see what a California living trust costs.
Stanislaus County Superior Court hears decedents' estates, trusts and probate conservatorships in its Civil and Probate Division at the City Towers Courthouse, 801 10th Street, Modesto, CA 95354. The Civil Clerk's Office is on the fourth floor, the court's main number is (209) 530-3100, and probate matters are heard Tuesday through Friday at 8:30 a.m. Guardianships, LPS conservatorships and adoptions are filed with the probate clerk at the Main Courthouse, 800 11th Street, instead. A home held in a funded living trust passes without any filing at either building.
Zillow's typical home value for Modesto was $442,564 as of August 31, 2026. Under Probate Code §10810 the statutory attorney fee on that gross value is $11,851.28, and the executor may claim the same amount under §10800, for $23,702.56 in total. The $435 first petition filing fee and a probate referee commission of about $443 are added to that. A living trust costs $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Often, yes. Probate Code §13151 lets heirs ask the court to transfer a decedent's primary residence worth up to $750,000 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, and the typical Modesto home, at $442,564 on Zillow for August 2026, is under that limit. It is still a court case at City Towers: a $435 filing fee, a wait of at least 40 days after the death, notice to heirs, and review by the probate examiner. It does not reach a rental, a second parcel or a home that was not the decedent's residence.
The Clerk-Recorder's posted fee schedule charges $14.00 for the first page and $3.00 for each additional page, and a deed recorded without a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report costs $20.00 more. The county's transfer instructions add a real estate fraud fee, listed at $3.00, when no transfer tax is paid. Documentary transfer tax is $0.00 because the county treats a transfer into a revocable trust for the grantor's benefit as not a sale. The $75 SB 2 fee is usually not charged on the deed for the home you live in, because the deed claims the owner-occupier exemption in Government Code §27388.1(a)(2); a rental, second home or vacant lot pays it, capped at $225 per transaction. Our office prepares the deed for $100 per property and you record it.
No. Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) provides that a transfer into a trust you can revoke is not a change in ownership, so the Stanislaus County Assessor keeps your Proposition 13 base year value. You claim that exclusion on the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report recorded with the deed. Reassessment questions come later, when your children inherit, under the Proposition 19 rules.
Yes. The junior unit is part of the same parcel, so one trust transfer deed covers it. The City of Modesto's recorded JADU deed restriction defines the property owner to include heirs or beneficiaries named in a declaration of trust holding title, and says the restriction runs with the land and binds heirs and successors. The owner occupancy rule and the ban on selling the junior unit separately stay in place after the deed and after your death.
Usually only the original will. Probate Code §8200 requires whoever holds the original will to deliver it to the court clerk within 30 days after learning of the death, and the Stanislaus court's probate page notes a $50 fee and a required cover sheet. That applies to the pour-over will in a trust plan too. Lodging a will does not open a probate case; if every asset is titled in the trust or passes by beneficiary designation, nothing more is filed.
Checked October 6, 2026. Fees and addresses change; confirm with the office before you file or record.
An attorney-prepared living trust for $400, or $500 for a married couple, signed before a notary in Modesto and funded with a deed recorded on I Street.
Law Offices of Rozsa Gyene, 3500 W. Olive Ave., Suite 300, Burbank, CA 91505. California State Bar #208356.
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