San Mateo Living Trust: Keep Your Peninsula Home Out of the Redwood City Probate Court
Reviewed by Rozsa Gyene, California attorney. Last reviewed October 2026.
Every San Mateo County estate is probated at the Hall of Justice in Redwood City. The city's typical home value of $1,672,329 is more than double the $750,000 ceiling for the simplified home petition, and on that value statutory attorney and executor fees come to $59,446.58. A funded living trust keeps the home out of that process for a $400 trust plus a $100 deed, or a $500 trust plus a $100 deed for a couple.
To keep a San Mateo home out of probate, sign a revocable living trust and record a deed moving the home into it with the San Mateo County Clerk-Recorder at 555 County Center in Redwood City. The county charges no documentary transfer tax on a deed into your own revocable trust, and the transfer does not reset your Proposition 13 value. Without a trust, attorney and executor fees on a home at the typical value of $1,672,329 total $59,446.58 under Probate Code §§10810 and 10800, before the $435 filing fee. Our attorney-prepared trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a couple.
Key Takeaways
Probate for a San Mateo resident is filed at the Hall of Justice, 400 County Center, Redwood City, and heard in Department 13. The clerk's office sees the public by appointment only, weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Deeds are recorded at the County Clerk-Recorder Division, 555 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, open weekdays 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., or by mail.
Inside city limits a deed carries two transfer tax declarations: the county's ($1.10 per $1,000, with an exemption for your own revocable trust) and the City of San Mateo's own tax.
Zillow's typical San Mateo home value was $1,672,329 on August 31, 2026, so statutory probate fees on that home are $59,446.58. Only one Zillow neighborhood in the city, North Central, sits under the $750,000 home petition limit.
After a death the successor trustee files form BOE-502-D with the Assessor within 150 days, and children who inherit the home file their Proposition 19 claim.
Where San Mateo Probate Is Heard
Courthouse
Hall of Justice, Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo
Address
400 County Center, Redwood City, CA 94063
Phone
Clerk's office (650) 261-5100, weekdays 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.; Department 13 (650) 261-5113
Probate department
Department 13, Courtroom 2C. Clerk's office open by appointment only, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
San Mateo is the largest city in San Mateo County, but it is not the county seat. Redwood City is, and the Superior Court hears every decedent's estate in the county at the Hall of Justice, 400 County Center. The court's probate page describes the Probate Court as handling decedents' estates, conservatorships, guardianships, trusts, elder abuse cases and other miscellaneous proceedings, and it names Department 13, Courtroom 2C, as the probate department. That is where a petition for letters on a San Mateo house would be set for hearing.
The clerk's office keeps short hours. Its phone line and its counter both run Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and the counter is by appointment only. Probate ex parte matters go to a separate email address the court publishes, and the court investigator's office has its own. The court also posts probate tentative rulings and Zoom hearing credentials online, runs a probate ADR program for disputes, and keeps a records index where the public can look up a case. That last point matters more than most families expect: the petition, the will, the inventory and appraisal, and the final accounting all become part of a public court file.
A probate does not move quickly by design. Creditors have four months after letters are first issued to file claims (Probate Code §9100), so no estate closes sooner, and the executor cannot distribute the house without a court order. A living trust works differently. The successor trustee you name takes over the trust's property without a petition, and the Hall of Justice is never involved unless someone asks the court to interpret the trust or review the trustee.
Recording a Trust Deed in Redwood City
Recorder
County Clerk-Recorder Division, San Mateo County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder & Elections
Address
555 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, CA 94063. Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.; walk-ins welcome, appointments optional.
$14.00 for the first page and $3.00 for each additional page. The schedule also lists a $6.00 real estate fraud prosecution fee per title and a $10.00 survey monument preservation fee on certain grant deeds.
SB 2 fee
$75 per parcel per title, capped at $225 per transaction, unless a valid exemption is declared on the face of the document
PCOR
A Preliminary Change of Ownership Report (BOE-502-A) must be filed with any conveyance; without it the County adds a $20 penalty fee (R&T §480.3)
A trust is only as good as its funding, and for a San Mateo house funding means one recorded deed: from you, as owner, to you as trustee of your trust. The County Clerk-Recorder takes deeds three ways. At the counter on the first floor of 555 County Center, a document that meets the recording requirements and comes with the right fees is recorded while you wait. By mail, FedEx or UPS, you send the deed to the San Mateo County Recorder, Recorder Division, 555 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, CA 94063-1665, with a pre-printed check or money order payable to San Mateo County Recorder; a rejected document comes back unrecorded with the reason. Electronic recording is used by title companies. For a deed recorded at the counter or by mail, the original is mailed back to the name and address in the upper left corner of the first page, which the County says takes about four to six weeks.
The recorder examines a deed only for recording requirements, not for whether it does what you meant it to do, and its staff are barred from giving legal advice. The requirements it lists are specific: a title on the first page, the right 5 inches of the top 2½ inches left clear for the recorder, the return address in the upper left, the tax statement address at the bottom of the first page, half inch side margins, and a proper acknowledgment. If any part of the document is not on 8½ by 11 inch paper, an extra $3 is charged for every page, and nothing larger than 8½ by 14 inches can be recorded.
Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) says a transfer into a revocable trust is not a change in ownership, so the home keeps its Proposition 13 base year value. The Assessor's own page explains why that matters: after Proposition 13, base values generally rise no more than 2 percent a year unless a change in ownership or new construction occurs. The deed still goes in with a PCOR, which the County treats as confidential.
The $75 SB 2 fee is usually not charged on a deed moving your own home into your trust, because the owner-occupier exemption under Government Code §27388.1(a)(2) is claimed on the deed. San Mateo County's notice on the fee says that when an exemption applies, a valid declaration must be placed on the face of each document before it is submitted, or the fee is assessed. The fee is charged on rentals, second homes and vacant land, capped at $225 per transaction. If you also own a rental condo or a duplex you rent out, each of those deeds carries the fee unless another exemption applies.
From January 1, 2027, Assembly Bill 2224 (Stats. 2026, ch. 292) sets the statewide base recording fee at $15 for the first page and $4 for each additional page, so expect the San Mateo County schedule to change then. Our office prepares the trust transfer deed for a separate $100 per property; you sign it before a notary and record it.
Two transfer taxes inside San Mateo city limits
San Mateo County charges documentary transfer tax at 55 cents per $500 of value, which the recorder states as $1.10 per $1,000. Among the exemptions it recognizes is a deed that transfers the grantor's interest to or from a revocable trust, with a statement that the trust is for the grantor's benefit and the transfer is not pursuant to a sale, under Revenue and Taxation Code §11930. For that deed the tax declaration shows $0 or none, with the exemption and the code section written on the face of the document, and the County asks for a Transfer Tax Affidavit detailing the claim.
The city adds a second layer. The recorder's page says that for property within the City of San Mateo an additional conveyance tax is levied for the city, that it does not discuss the city tax or its exemptions, and that a separate city declaration must also appear on the face of the deed. Chapter 3.48 of the San Mateo Municipal Code sets that tax at one half of one percent of the consideration or value below $10,000,000 and one and one half percent at $10,000,000 or more. Its exemption list in §3.48.030 covers interspousal transfers, including a transfer to a trustee for a spouse's benefit, transfers between parents and children of a single family residence, and changes among co-owners who have held their shares for at least five years or acquired them in the same transaction, but it does not mention a transfer into your own revocable trust. The code taxes a deed when the "consideration or value" exceeds $100, defines that term as the price paid, counting a loan that stays on the property, and falls back to fair market value when the consideration cannot be determined; it does not say that a deed with no price is outside the tax. The county exemption does not answer the city question, so the city line on the deed is the one to complete with care. The city declaration applies only to property within San Mateo city limits.
What Probate Would Cost on a Typical San Mateo Home
Zillow's typical home value for the city of San Mateo was $1,672,329 on August 31, 2026 (Zillow Home Value Index, all homes, middle tier), up from $1,658,490 a month earlier. We use that figure for the math. Under Probate Code §10810 the attorney receives 4% of the first $100,000, 3% of the next $100,000, 2% of the next $800,000 and 1% of the next $9,000,000, figured on the gross value of the estate without subtracting the mortgage. Section 10800 gives the executor the same amount. A San Mateo home at the typical value reaches the 1% tier.
Court filing fee: $435 for the first petition for letters in San Mateo County, under the Judicial Council's statewide civil fee schedule effective January 1, 2026.
Probate referee: one tenth of one percent of the appraised property (Probate Code §8961), about $1,672 on this home.
Creditor period: four months after letters issue (Probate Code §9100).
That is about $59,447 in statutory fees alone, against $400 for a single person's trust or $500 for a couple's. The California probate fees guide explains the full schedule. The small estate affidavit stops at $208,850 for deaths on or after April 1, 2025, and the Probate Code §13151 petition for a primary residence stops at $750,000 for the same deaths. That petition is still a court filing, at the same $435 fee.
The same math, neighborhood by neighborhood
Zillow also publishes a typical value for each San Mateo neighborhood it tracks. The figures below are for August 31, 2026, rounded to the dollar, with the combined attorney and executor fee under §§10810 and 10800.
Neighborhood (Zillow)
Typical value, Aug. 31, 2026
Attorney plus executor fee
North Central
$623,373
$30,934.92
Edgewater Isle
$896,626
$41,865.04
Mariners Island
$1,071,948
$47,438.96
North Shoreview
$1,370,714
$53,414.28
Bay Meadows
$1,556,865
$57,137.30
Aragon
$2,345,188
$72,903.76
Baywood Knolls
$3,112,863
$88,257.26
San Mateo Park
$4,236,023
$110,720.46
North Central is the only neighborhood on the list whose typical value falls under the $750,000 §13151 limit, and even there the petition helps only with a primary residence and only for deaths on or after April 1, 2025; a rental or a second property still needs its own answer. In San Mateo Park the statutory fees on a typical home pass $110,000. In every case the fee is set by the gross value of what passes through probate, so a large loan balance does not shrink it.
San Mateo Homes, Equity Pay and Your Trust
A city split between owners and renters
San Mateo had 105,661 residents in the 2020 Census, and the Census Bureau estimated 103,337 as of July 1, 2025. The 2020 count found 42,229 housing units, 40,263 of them occupied, and the occupied homes split almost evenly: 49.8% owner-occupied and 50.2% rented. About 15.5% of residents were 65 or older, and 11.0% of households were a person 65 or older living alone. For a trust that mix has two consequences. Every rented home has an owner, and if that owner is you, the deed for that rental does not qualify for the owner-occupier SB 2 exemption. And an owner who lives alone needs a successor trustee and an agent under the durable power of attorney who can act without a court conservatorship if the owner can no longer manage the house.
If you own a residence and a rental on separate parcels, each parcel is its own deed, its own PCOR and its own pair of transfer tax declarations. Listing every parcel by its assessor's parcel number in the questionnaire helps make sure nothing is left in your own name.
Condominiums, townhomes and Bay Meadows
San Mateo's downtown and the neighborhoods east of El Camino Real are denser than those to the west, and much of the newer housing is attached. Bay Meadows is one example: an 83 acre mixed use, transit oriented neighborhood built on the site of the Bay Meadows racetrack, which closed in 2008, with hundreds of new residential units, townhomes among them. A condominium unit goes into a trust by the same kind of deed as a house, using the unit and common area description from your vesting deed. Moving the unit into your own revocable trust is not a sale, but read your association's documents for any notice requirement and keep the association's records in the trustee's name afterward.
Equity pay and brokerage accounts
San Mateo is home to the headquarters of Sony Interactive Entertainment, Franklin Templeton, Roblox and GoPro. If part of your pay comes in company stock, note the difference between shares you own and awards you hold. Shares that have been delivered to a brokerage account can be retitled to your trust like any other account. Unvested restricted stock units and options are governed by the company's plan, which decides whether they can be transferred and who receives them at death, and 401(k) plans and IRAs pass by beneficiary designation. The trust works alongside those documents; it does not override them. List each plan in the questionnaire so the funding instructions cover it.
Adding a child to the deed is not a substitute
Putting an adult child on title during your life is a gift of part of the house. The Assessor's office lists gift transfers among the changes in ownership that can be reassessed, and the child's share is exposed to the child's own creditors and divorce. A trust leaves title with you, as trustee, until your death. Proposition 19 applies either way: for transfers from February 16, 2025 through February 15, 2027, a parent to child transfer of a family home keeps the old taxable value only if the child makes it his or her principal residence, and only up to the old value plus $1,044,586, per the Board of Equalization. See the Proposition 19 inheritance rules for the details.
Property in more than one county
One trust can hold a San Mateo house, a rental in Santa Clara County and a cabin in the Sierra. Each parcel is deeded in the county where it sits, under that county's recorder rules and that county's transfer tax. Real estate outside California left in your own name may need a separate probate in that state, which a trust that holds the property also avoids.
What the trustee files after a death
The San Mateo County Assessor asks for a Change in Ownership Statement, Death of Real Property Owner (BOE-502-D), within 150 days of the death to avoid a penalty. If the home goes to your children, the Assessor's FAQ says they must file the parent and child exclusion claim or the property will be reassessed; for deaths on or after February 16, 2021 that is form BOE-19-P (or BOE-19-G for a grandparent transfer). Even children who sell the house need to file, because the possible reassessment covers the time between the death and the sale, and after a sale they have only six months from a supplemental or escape notice to submit the claim. The Board of Equalization's general deadline for BOE-19-P is three years from the death or before a transfer to a third party, whichever is earlier, and Revenue and Taxation Code §63.2(f) also treats a claim as timely within six months after a supplemental or escape assessment notice. The Assessor also asks that it have a current address for the successor trustee. The trustee then records a deed out of the trust to the beneficiaries with a PCOR. None of it goes through the Hall of Justice.
How to Create and Fund a Living Trust in San Mateo
Answer the questionnaireList each property you own in San Mateo County by its assessor's parcel number, how title is vested today, your beneficiaries and your successor trustee. Most people finish the questionnaire in 20 to 30 minutes.
Attorney preparation and reviewRozsa Gyene, California State Bar #208356, prepares and reviews the trust, pour-over will, durable power of attorney and advance health care directive from your answers.
Sign before a notarySign the trust documents before a California notary public. The deed must be acknowledged before the San Mateo County recorder will accept it.
Record the deed in Redwood CityRecord the trust transfer deed with the County Clerk-Recorder Division, 555 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, in person or by mail, with a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report, the documentary transfer tax exemption statement, the City of San Mateo declaration if the home is inside city limits, and the SB 2 exemption declaration if the home is your residence. Our office prepares the deed for $100 per property; you record it.
Retitle bank and brokerage accountsAsk each bank and brokerage to change the account owner to you as trustee of your trust, using the certification of trust instead of the full trust.
Review beneficiary designationsRetirement accounts, life insurance and employer stock plans pass by their own beneficiary forms and plan rules, not by the trust. Check each form so it matches your plan.
Advance health care directive with HIPAA authorization
Certification of trust
Assignment of personal property
Personal property memorandum
Funding instructions
The package is $400 for one person and $500 for a couple. A trust transfer deed is a separate $100 per property, prepared by our office for you to record in Redwood City. You can reach the attorney directly at (818) 337-4071, and you can sign before any California notary. See what a California living trust costs for how our pricing compares, and living trust or will if you are deciding between the two.
San Mateo Living Trust Questions
How much would probate cost on a typical San Mateo home?
Zillow's typical home value for the city of San Mateo was $1,672,329 on August 31, 2026. On that value the statutory attorney fee under Probate Code §10810 is $29,723.29 and the executor fee under §10800 is the same, so the two together come to $59,446.58. The fee is figured on the gross value, so a mortgage does not reduce it. The first petition costs $435 to file in San Mateo County, and the probate referee's commission is one tenth of one percent of the property appraised, about $1,672 on that home. A funded living trust avoids these costs for the assets it holds.
Where is probate filed for a San Mateo resident?
In the Superior Court of California, County of San Mateo, at the Hall of Justice, 400 County Center, Redwood City, CA 94063. The court lists Department 13, Courtroom 2C, as its probate department. The clerk's office is open by appointment only, Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m., and answers the phone at (650) 261-5100 during the same hours. The court lists only this Redwood City location for its probate courtroom and clerk's office.
Do I pay transfer tax when I deed my San Mateo home into my own living trust?
Not the county tax. San Mateo County charges documentary transfer tax at $1.10 per $1,000 of value, and its recorder lists as exempt a deed that transfers the grantor's interest to a revocable trust for the grantor's benefit, not pursuant to a sale, under Revenue and Taxation Code §11930. The deed shows the tax as $0 or none with that statement. Inside San Mateo city limits the city also levies its own real property transfer tax, and the County requires a separate city declaration on the face of the deed. The city's exemption list in Municipal Code §3.48.030 does not mention revocable trusts, so that line is completed with care.
Will my property tax go up when I put my San Mateo home in my trust?
No. Revenue and Taxation Code §62(d) excludes a transfer into a revocable trust from change in ownership, so your Proposition 13 base value stays the same. The San Mateo County recorder requires a Preliminary Change of Ownership Report with the deed and adds a $20 fee if it is missing.
Is the $75 SB 2 recording fee charged on my trust deed?
It depends on the property. The $75 SB 2 fee is usually not charged on a deed moving your own home into your trust, because the owner-occupier exemption under Government Code §27388.1(a)(2) is claimed on the face of the deed. San Mateo County says a valid declaration of exemption must appear on the face of each document or the fee is collected. The fee is charged on rentals, second homes and vacant land, capped at $225 per transaction. No county guarantees the exemption.
Can I record my trust deed by mail in San Mateo County?
Yes. The County Clerk-Recorder accepts documents by mail, FedEx or UPS at 555 County Center, 1st Floor, Redwood City, CA 94063-1665, with a pre-printed check or money order payable to San Mateo County Recorder. Over the counter, a document that meets the requirements is recorded while you wait. Either way the original deed is mailed back to the name in the upper left corner, which the County says takes about four to six weeks.
What does my successor trustee file with the San Mateo County Assessor after I die?
The Assessor asks for a Change in Ownership Statement, Death of Real Property Owner (BOE-502-D), within 150 days of the death. If the home goes to your children, they must also file the parent and child exclusion claim (BOE-19-P for deaths on or after February 16, 2021) or the home is reassessed. The Assessor notes that even children who sell the house still need to file the claim for the period between the death and the sale.
How much does a living trust cost in San Mateo?
Our attorney-prepared living trust is $400 for one person or $500 for a couple. The price includes the revocable living trust, pour-over will, durable power of attorney and advance health care directive. Our office can prepare the trust transfer deed for a separate $100 per property; you sign it before a notary and record it with the San Mateo County Clerk-Recorder, which is the step that actually moves the home into the trust.
