When a person passes away, his or her affairs will need to be settled. This process involves making a list of all the assets the person owned, paying off the person's debts, and distributing the remaining assets to whoever is entitled to receive them. The administration process varies, depending on whether the deceased person had engaged in any estate planning during their lifetime and, if so, whether he or she had a will or a revocable trust in place.

If you die with property held in your name, there will likely need to be a "probate" proceeding to transfer that property to the person entitled to receive that property. If you executed a will before you died, the people who are entitled to receive your property would be listed in the will. If you did not execute a will before you died, you would be considered to be "intestate," and all your property would be passed along to certain people specified under California's inheritance laws. An administrator of your estate would be appointed during the probate proceeding, and that person would be in charge of paying your debts and managing your property during the administration period.

If you had executed a revocable trust before you died, it is likely that a probate proceeding can be avoided. The trust itself would contain a provision describing who will receive the trust property after you die (the "beneficiaries" of the trust). The trust would also name a  "successor trustee" who would be in charge of supervising the affairs of the trust after you have died and ensuring that trust assets are properly distributed to the trust beneficiaries. The complexity of a trust administration will depend both on the type of assets in the trusts and the method of transferring the trust property to the beneficiaries. While the probate court is typically not involved in the administration of a trust, the successor trustee is required to follow various formalities described in California's Probate Code. 

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