William Ha Law, A Professional Law Corporation

William Ha Law, A Professional Law Corporation Estate planning law firm serving Californians

07/25/2026

IYKYK

07/24/2026

Social media is a dangerous place to learn law because the algorithm rewards dopamine producing reels, and there’s nothing that triggers dopamine more than when people think they learned a “loophole”. Because of this, creators are incentivized to find a point that is contrarian which may or may not be true.

Partial truths are abundant in these reels, and despite easy access to law, people end up just listening to what the follower says and they end up hurting themselves. If a person has no license to lose, they will be more reckless with the information.

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07/23/2026

Comment: money

You might have unclaimed money in your name on this website. This happens when a custodian couldn’t track you down to refund you, or you’ve ignored them for a long time. The state holds on to it for you to claim it one day. Most people have a few bucks, but sometimes there are thousands waiting to be claimed.

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07/22/2026

I know it’s hard to believe, but there homes in California worth less than $750K, and it’s not just the historic ADU in San Jose!

Think you need to do a full probate admin for your parent’s house? There may be another way.

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07/21/2026

We have different phases and windows in life, and we are likely under utilizing our money to our full potential. Don’t rob your 20s and 30s for a life you can no longer live in your 70s. This is the premise from the book Die With Zero.

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07/19/2026

Things your lawyer may have neglected to make clear.

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07/18/2026

Welcome to the series where I talk about why trusts fail.

Hi, my name is Will Ha, I’m a California licensed attorney focused on trusts and estates.

The scenario I’m going to cover is likely the most common reason why trusts fail.

When you create a trust, you are essentially creating a property management agreement that can survive your death. This agreement has to be associated with property so that other people can manage it.

If there’s no property in trust, then there’s nothing to manage.

In the case of a house, a deed transferring title has to be granted to the trust ee of the trust.

Sometimes, this was never done, or also common is the house was taken out of trust to do a refinance, but never put back.

And the end result? It’s probate court, negating all your efforts of hiring an estate planner in the first place.

So do your important people a favor and make sure that all the assets you want to be managed by the trust is still in fact aligned with the trust.

Follow me to keep up with this series.

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07/16/2026

Have you ever looked at your California property Tax Bill and wondered what this line was about?

If the line is blank and you only have one home, you could be leaving money on the table. That is, an opportunity to reduce your home’s assessed value by $7,000.

Before you get too excited, this only works out to be about $70 - $80 dollars per year. The reason is because California property taxes are based on 1% of the assessed value, plus some additional local taxes.

You can take advantage of this exemption this by filing a form called the CLAIM FOR HOMEOWNERS’ PROPERTY TAX EXEMPTION with your county assessor.

You should be able to find this online and it will only take 5 minutes to fill out.

One additional reason to fill out this form is to help your kids get prop 19 ready. Only a principal residence can exclude reassessment if your kids inherit and live there.

And that $70 dollars people saved in the late 70s per year?

That now has the buying power of closer to $400 today. If you’re unhappy about this, perhaps this is something to write to your state assembly member about.

Follow me for more tips about your property.

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William Ha Law

07/13/2026

Comment: pdf
Note: Prop 19 also limits what’s excluded from reassessment to base + $1M (adjusted for inflation)

I think that Prop 19 is a sibling relationship killer.

What I mean by this is that it drives an additional wedge between siblings after a parent’s death and it’s worse when they don’t understand the rules.

Last week, I posted some reels on property taxes when someone dies, and there were tons of comments and questions about the parent-child exclusion under Prop 19.

Let me give you an example.

Let’s take a very simple distribution that I along with many estate planning attorneys do for clients: everything in equal share to my two children, and let’s say the trust has just the house.

Before Prop 19 the kids could just inherit a principal residence it and rent it out. And the original tax assessment was preserved. The tax bill basically stayed the same.

Now after Prop 19, the new Parent-Child Exclusion rules require at least one of the kids to move in as their main house, and they have to do so within a year after the date of death. And there is up to a limit in the amount that won’t get reassessed.

So now there’s an incentive to move in.

Let’s say the child who moves in can’t afford to pay the sibling rent. The sibling will say, just buy me out. So they take a cash out refinance and buys the other sibling out. And guess what the county assessor will say? The buy out was a new transfer and the property is now subject to a reassessment, effectively killing the parent child exclusion.

Splitting up a house up was always tricky, but Prop 19 made it even harder.

If you want a short PDF I made about the parent child exclusion in plain English, comment pdf below.

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William Ha Law
6528 Greenleaf Ave 301
Whittier, CA 90601

07/10/2026

When I get these calls, I generally decline helping because there isn’t enough time, and there may be capacity issues.

To avoid this scenario, make sure you have your plan in place before this state.

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Address

6528 Greenleaf Avenue, 301
Whittier, CA
90601

Telephone

+15626002650

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