Roseville Living Trust: Created by a California-Licensed Attorney, Delivered Remotely
Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.
Roseville has the Placer County court's main courthouse, but probate is heard at the Historic Courthouse in Auburn. On Zillow's August 2026 typical Roseville home value of $645,119, the statutory attorney and executor fees in a full probate would total $31,804.76. A funded living trust keeps the house out of that case for a $400 trust plus a $100 deed.
A Roseville home stays out of probate when you sign a revocable living trust and record a deed putting the house into it with the Placer County Clerk-Recorder. Without that deed, a house at Zillow's August 2026 typical Roseville value of $645,119 would go through Placer County Superior Court in Auburn, where the statutory attorney and executor fees under Probate Code §10810 and §10800 come to $31,804.76. The attorney-prepared trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Key Takeaways
Placer County probate is heard at the Historic Courthouse, 101 Maple Street, Auburn, in Department 2 according to the court's October 5, 2026 calendar notes. The Gibson Courthouse in Roseville is the main courthouse but not the probate courtroom.
Probate files are kept at the Gibson Courthouse in Roseville, where the public requests and views them.
The Placer County Clerk-Recorder's main office is at 3715 Atherton Road in Rocklin, with a satellite office in Auburn. Recording hours are 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Zillow put Roseville's typical home value at $645,119 for August 2026. Statutory fees on that value are $15,902.38 for the attorney and the same for the executor, $31,804.76 together.
Several west Roseville developments, including the Sierra Vista and Fiddyment Ranch areas, sit in Mello-Roos community facilities districts. The special tax stays on the parcel after the deed into the trust.
Attorney-prepared trust: $400 single, $500 married couple. A deed is a separate $100 per property.
Placer County Probate Is Heard in Auburn
Courthouse
Superior Court of California, County of Placer, Historic Courthouse
Address
101 Maple Street, Auburn, CA 95603
Courtroom
Department 2, as stated in the court's probate calendar notes for October 5, 2026. The calendar starts at 8:30 a.m. and moves to Tuesdays beginning the week of November 2, 2026.
Phone
(916) 408-6000, option 5 (Civil Division, which handles probate)
Filing
Clerk's Office on the second floor of the Historic Courthouse, 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, with a drop box for filings after hours
Case files
Requested and viewed at the Hon. Howard G. Gibson Courthouse, 10820 Justice Center Drive, Roseville, CA 95678
The Gibson Courthouse on Justice Center Drive is in Roseville. The court calls it its main courthouse, and it houses Departments 30 through 44, the clerk's office, the self-help center and jury services. Probate is not heard there. The court's Probate Division page says decedents' estates, trusts, guardianships and conservatorships are filed and heard in its Civil Division, and the probate calendar itself sits in Auburn: the calendar notes for October 5, 2026 list the hearing in Department 2 at 101 Maple Street, the Historic Courthouse, which holds Departments 1 through 6. Probate Code §7051 sends an estate to the county where the person was domiciled, so a Roseville resident's estate is opened in Placer County and heard in that Auburn courtroom.
Before each probate calendar the court posts calendar notes under its Local Rule 80.1.4, and the notes tell petitioners what is missing from their papers. Remote appearances are generally available on that calendar under Local Rule 10.24(G), and the court charges $13 (plus card transaction fees) for an audio or video appearance in a probate case, a fee it reduced on July 1, 2025. An executor living in Roseville can therefore often appear without the drive up Interstate 80, but the petition, the notices, the inventory and any accountings still have to be prepared and filed.
The file itself ends up back in Roseville. According to the court's Historic Courthouse page, files cannot be viewed in Auburn; they are kept at the Gibson Courthouse and the Tahoe City courthouse and must be requested and viewed there. A probate file is a public court record, so the will, the inventory of the house and the accounts, and the names of the heirs are available at a courthouse a few miles from the family home. A trust administration has no petition, no Department 2 hearing and no public file. The successor trustee works from the trust and from the deed you recorded during your life.
Placer County Clerk-Recorder: Recording the Trust Deed
Main office
Placer County Clerk-Recorder, 3715 Atherton Road, Rocklin, CA 95765, the office nearest Roseville
Satellite office
2954 Richardson Drive, Auburn, CA 95603
Recording hours
8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, except legal holidays. Documents may also be mailed.
Phone
Recording (530) 886-5600
Recording fee
The county's fee schedule lists $14 for the first page and $3 for each additional page, plus $3 a page for a nonconforming page.
SB 2 fee
$75 per document under Government Code §27388.1, not to exceed $225, unless an exemption is stated on the document
PCOR
A Preliminary Change of Ownership Report (BOE-502-A) goes with the deed. Without it the Recorder charges $20 more (Revenue and Taxation Code §480.3).
Assessor
Placer County Assessor, 2980 Richardson Drive, Auburn, CA 95603, (530) 889-4300
Signing the trust does not put your Roseville house into it. The deed does. It conveys the property from you as owner to you as trustee of your trust, and it is recorded in Placer County, where the house sits. For most Roseville owners the Rocklin office on Atherton Road is closer than Auburn. The county treats Rocklin as its main Clerk-Recorder office and keeps the Richardson Drive office open for north and east county residents. A deed can also be recorded by mail.
The $75 SB 2 fee is usually not charged on a deed moving your own home into your trust, because the owner-occupier exemption in Government Code §27388.1(a)(2) is claimed on the face of the deed. It is charged on rentals, second homes and vacant land, capped at $225 per transaction. Placer County's documentary transfer tax is $0.55 for each $500 of value on a sale, but a deed into your own revocable trust has no buyer and no price. The deed declares the Revenue and Taxation Code §11930 exemption, and the tax on it is $0.00.
The PCOR has a box for a transfer into a revocable trust. Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) says that transfer is not a change in ownership, so the Placer County Assessor keeps your Proposition 13 base year value and no supplemental bill follows. Our living trust property tax guide walks through the form. Our office prepares the deed and the PCOR for a separate $100 per property. You record them yourself, at either office or by mail, and that recording is the step that funds the house into the trust. The page fees change on January 1, 2027, when AB 2224 (Stats. 2026, ch. 292) makes the Government Code §27361 base fee $15.00 for the first page and $4.00 for each additional page; county add-on fees are charged on top of that base. The trust transfer deed guide explains the deed itself.
What Probate Would Cost on a Typical Roseville Home
Zillow's Home Value Index put the typical home value in Roseville at $645,119 for August 2026 (Zillow research data through August 31, 2026). Probate Code §10810 sets the attorney's statutory fee as a percentage of the gross estate: 4% of the first $100,000, 3% of the next $100,000 and 2% of the next $800,000. Gross means a mortgage is not subtracted. Probate Code §10800 gives the executor the same amount again.
Court filing fee: $435 for the first petition, the statewide fee that Placer County charges.
Probate referee: one tenth of one percent of the property the referee appraises (Probate Code §8961), about $645 on this house.
Creditor period: at least four months after letters are first issued (Probate Code §9100), so no estate closes sooner.
Our California probate fees guide covers each charge in more detail. Two shortcuts exist, and neither fits most Roseville houses well. The small estate affidavit under Probate Code §13100 stops at $208,850 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, far below any Roseville neighborhood value. The Probate Code §13151 petition covers a primary residence worth up to $750,000 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, and the typical Roseville home is under that line. It is still a petition in the Auburn courtroom, with the $435 fee and notice to heirs and devisees within five business days of filing, and it covers only the home the person lived in. A rental house or a home in one of the higher priced neighborhoods below falls outside it. Set against those costs, the trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Roseville Neighborhoods, Special Taxes and Flood Insurance
A railroad town that became Placer County's largest city
Roseville had 147,773 residents in the 2020 Census, the most of any city in Placer County. It incorporated in 1909, three years after the Southern Pacific moved its rail facilities from Rocklin, and stayed small for decades: 28,988 people in 1985, 74,234 by 2000. That history matters for planning. An owner who bought near downtown decades ago may carry a low Proposition 13 value, which is exactly the value Proposition 19 lets a child keep only in limited cases. An owner in a newer western subdivision may have a mortgage and a Mello-Roos special tax on the bill. Both kinds of owner need the same deed into the trust, but the planning conversation is different.
Neighborhood values and the $750,000 line
Zillow's August 2026 neighborhood figures show how much the §13151 question depends on where in Roseville the house is. The typical value was $334,665 in Harding, $430,054 in Roseville Heights, $595,096 in Sun City, $669,917 in Diamond Oaks, $680,255 in Westpark and $710,112 in Fiddyment Farm, all under the $750,000 limit. It was $770,578 in Johnson Ranch, $785,237 in Pleasant Grove and $860,489 in Stoneridge, all over it. A home in the first group may be able to use the primary residence petition after a death, though that is still a court case in Auburn. A home in the second group, if it was never deeded into a trust, generally goes through a full probate. Every one of these figures is above the $208,850 small estate limit. A funded trust takes the question off the table, because the house is not part of the probate estate.
Mello-Roos special taxes in west Roseville
Several of the city's newer developments sit in community facilities districts formed under the Mello-Roos Community Facilities Act of 1982. One example is the City of Roseville's SVSP Westpark-Federico Community Facilities District No. 1. Its 2022 bond official statement describes about 143 acres planned for 781 single family homes in the Sierra Vista Specific Plan in the southwest part of the city, with a maximum annual facilities special tax for fiscal year 2022-23 of $1,910.17 per low density unit and $1,697.93 per medium density unit, escalating 2% a year. The Fiddyment Ranch area in the West Roseville Specific Plan has its own district, Fiddyment Ranch Community Facilities District No. 1. The official statement says the special tax is collected in the same manner and at the same time as ordinary property taxes unless the city chooses to bill it directly, and that the city may bring a superior court action to foreclose the lien if an installment is not paid.
For a trust, that means three things. The deed into the trust does not change, end or reduce the special tax, because it is levied on the parcel. If you become unable to manage your affairs, your successor trustee can keep paying the tax bill under the trust's authority, without a conservatorship. And after your death the tax stays with the house, so the trust should say who pays the bills while the property is held, sold or distributed.
Flood insurance in a Class 1 city
In February 2020 the City of Roseville announced that it was the only community holding a Class 1 rating in FEMA's Community Rating System, a ranking it had held since 2006, and that the rating brings flood insurance discounts of up to 45%. The city traces its program to January 1995, when 358 structures flooded, and to about $33 million in creek widening, flood walls and bypass channels built afterward. The city's Public Works department takes written requests for flood hazard information on a specific property. When the house moves into the trust, tell your homeowner's insurer and your flood insurer, if you carry a policy, and ask that the trust be added. Keep the policy numbers and any elevation certificate with the trust papers so a successor trustee can find them.
City utilities and accounts that are not deeded
Roseville runs its own electric, water, wastewater and solid waste services through Roseville Electric Utility and Environmental Utilities. Those accounts are not property that a deed moves. After a death or incapacity, the successor trustee simply contacts the city to put the service in the trustee's name while the house is managed or sold. Retirement plans, pensions and life insurance are different again: they pass by beneficiary designation, outside both the trust and the will, which is why the last step of funding below is a review of every designation.
Property in another county
A Roseville trust can hold real estate anywhere in California, but each parcel is deeded and recorded in the county where it lies. A rental in Sacramento County is recorded with the Sacramento County Clerk/Recorder (see our Sacramento living trust page), and a cabin or lot in El Dorado County is recorded in Placerville (see our El Dorado Hills living trust page). Each deed needs its own PCOR, and a probate for a parcel left outside the trust would be opened in Placer County, where you lived, wherever in California the parcel lies.
What the trustee files after a death
Revenue and Taxation Code §480(b) requires a change in ownership statement within 150 days after the date of death, filed with the recorder or assessor of each county where the person owned property, and it applies expressly to property held in a trust. For a Roseville house that means the Placer County Assessor on Richardson Drive in Auburn. A trust avoids probate; it does not avoid reassessment when children inherit. Under Proposition 19 a child keeps the parent's taxable value on the family home only if the child makes it a principal residence and files for the homeowners' exemption within one year, and the protection is capped at the old taxable value plus $1,044,586 for transfers from February 16, 2025 to February 15, 2027. The claim, form BOE-19-P, goes to the Placer County Assessor. A rental house does not qualify. Our Prop 19 inheritance guide has the details.
How to Create and Fund a Living Trust in Roseville
Fill in the questionnaire onlineFrom home in Roseville, answer the questions about your family, your Placer County house and any other parcel, your bank and brokerage accounts, and who should take over as successor trustee. You can stop and finish later.
The attorney drafts your documentsRozsa Gyene, a California attorney, prepares the trust, pour-over will, durable power of attorney, advance health care directive and certification of trust from your answers, and reviews each one before it is delivered to you.
Sign in front of a notarySign the trust and the power of attorney before a California notary public in Roseville or anywhere convenient. The pour-over will is signed before two witnesses, as the signing instructions explain.
Record a deed with the Placer County Clerk-RecorderDeed your Roseville house, and any other Placer County parcel, to yourself as trustee. Record each deed with a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report at the Clerk-Recorder's office on Atherton Road in Rocklin or on Richardson Drive in Auburn. The deed for the home you live in claims the SB 2 owner-occupier exemption, so the $75 fee is usually not charged on it; a rental pays it.
Retitle bank and brokerage accountsGive each bank and brokerage firm a copy of the certification of trust and ask it to put the account in your name as trustee, or to name the trust as the payable on death beneficiary where the firm allows that.
Check every beneficiary designation401(k) and 403(b) plans, IRAs, pensions and life insurance pass to the beneficiary named on the account, not under the trust. Confirm that each one names the person or the trust you intend, with a contingent beneficiary.
Advance health care directive with HIPAA authorization
Certification of trust
Assignment of personal property
Personal property memorandum
Funding instructions
One person pays $400 and a Roseville married couple pays $500 for the joint package. The deed for the house, or for any other Placer County parcel, is a separate $100 per property. Questions go to the attorney's office at (818) 337-4071. To see how the pricing compares, read what a California living trust costs.
Roseville Living Trust Questions
Where do Roseville probate cases go to court?
Placer County Superior Court hears probate at the Historic Courthouse, 101 Maple Street, Auburn, CA 95603. The court's probate calendar notes for October 5, 2026 place the calendar in Department 2 there, and say it moves to Tuesdays at 8:30 a.m. beginning the week of November 2, 2026. The Howard G. Gibson Courthouse on Justice Center Drive in Roseville is the court's main courthouse, but it is not where probate is heard. Probate Code §7051 sends the case to the county where the person was domiciled, so a Roseville resident's estate goes to Auburn.
How much does probate cost on a Roseville home?
Zillow's typical home value for Roseville was $645,119 for August 2026. Under Probate Code §10810 the statutory attorney fee on that gross value is $15,902.38, and the executor may take the same amount under §10800, for a combined $31,804.76. The $435 filing fee and a probate referee's commission of about $645 are added on top. A mortgage does not reduce the figure. A living trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a married couple.
Can a Roseville home pass by the $750,000 primary residence petition instead of probate?
Sometimes. For deaths on or after April 1, 2025, Probate Code §13151 lets heirs petition the court for a primary residence worth up to $750,000. The typical Roseville home, at $645,119 on Zillow for August 2026, is under that line, while Zillow's figures for Johnson Ranch, Pleasant Grove and Stoneridge are above it. The petition is still filed in Auburn with a $435 fee and notice to heirs, and it does not reach a rental or a second home.
Where do I record my trust transfer deed if I live in Roseville?
With the Placer County Clerk-Recorder. The main office is at 3715 Atherton Road in Rocklin, the closest one to Roseville, and a satellite office is at 2954 Richardson Drive in Auburn. Documents are recorded from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, and the recording line is (530) 886-5600. Add $20 if the deed goes in without a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report. 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. Documentary transfer tax is $0.00. Our office prepares the deed for $100 per property and you record it.
Does the attorney have an office in Roseville?
No. Attorney Rozsa Gyene's law office is in Burbank, at 3500 W. Olive Ave., Suite 300. Roseville clients work with the office through the online questionnaire, by phone at (818) 337-4071 and by email, and the finished documents are delivered electronically. You sign before a notary near you. The same California attorney prepares every document, whatever county the client lives in.
Is a California living trust valid in Placer County?
Yes. A revocable trust signed by a California resident is governed by state law, chiefly Division 9 of the Probate Code, so the same document works in Placer County and in every other California county. What makes it work for your Roseville house is the recorded deed: the trust controls only the property titled in it, so the home has to be deeded to you as trustee and the deed recorded with the Placer County Clerk-Recorder.
Does a Mello-Roos special tax in west Roseville follow my home into the trust?
Yes. Community facilities district taxes, such as those of the City of Roseville's SVSP Westpark-Federico CFD No. 1 in the Sierra Vista Specific Plan, are liens on the parcel and are normally collected with the regular property tax bill. Deeding the house to yourself as trustee does not change, end or reduce the levy. The city can bring a superior court foreclosure action if an installment goes unpaid, so the trust should give your successor trustee clear authority to pay the tax bill.
What does my successor trustee file with Placer County after I die?
Revenue and Taxation Code §480(b) requires a change in ownership statement within 150 days after the date of death, filed with the county recorder or assessor, and it applies to property held in a trust. The Placer County Assessor is at 2980 Richardson Drive in Auburn, (530) 889-4300. If a child is to keep your Proposition 13 value under Proposition 19, a separate claim on form BOE-19-P is filed with the Assessor. None of this is a court filing.
Law Offices of Rozsa Gyene, 3500 W. Olive Ave., Suite 300, Burbank, CA 91505. California State Bar #208356. Roseville and Placer County clients are served remotely.
