If you have just been told you are the successor trustee of a California trust, several deadlines began running at the moment of death. They interact, and one of them behaves very differently from the others.
§16061.7 — you must give notice within 60 days
Probate Code §16061.7(f) requires the trustee to serve notification within 60 days of the triggering event — typically the settlor’s death, or the trust becoming irrevocable. It goes to each beneficiary and to each heir at law.
There is a formatting requirement people miss: the warning paragraph required by §16061.7(h) must appear in 10-point boldface. That is not decorative. A notice missing it may not do the job it was sent to do.
§16061.8 — the contest window you are trying to close
Serving the notice is what starts the clock on challenges. Under §16061.8, a beneficiary or heir has the later of:
- 120 days from service of the notification, or
- 60 days from delivery of a copy of the trust terms, if that comes later.
Which is the reason to serve the notice promptly rather than perfectly. The contest window does not begin to close until you send it — every week of delay is a week added to the period in which the trust can be challenged.
One useful point: a late-served notice still starts a valid clock. Being past the 60 days is not a reason to give up on serving it. Serve it.
§9100 — creditor claims, in a probate
Where there is a probate, Probate Code §9100 gives a creditor the later of four months after letters are first issued to a general personal representative, or 60 days after notice is given to that particular creditor.
Note “general”. Letters issued to a special administrator do not start it. And it is the later of the two prongs, not the earlier — a creditor noticed late gets their 60 days regardless of how long the four months has been running.
CCP §366.2 — the one that reaches trust assets
Code of Civil Procedure §366.2 imposes a one-year limitation from the date of death on claims against a decedent that survive their death. It is essentially untollable, and — the part that matters here — it reaches trust assets, not just probate assets.
So the trust is not a wall. A creditor with a valid claim against the decedent has a year, and the trust’s property is within reach during it. A trustee distributing everything at month eight and then meeting a claim at month eleven has a genuine problem.
This is the strongest single argument for not rushing distribution, and it is the one that most often goes unmentioned when families are impatient to close things out.
How this affects selling the house
A trustee’s sale generally requires no court confirmation under §16226, so none of these clocks stop you from listing or closing. What they do affect is the timing of distribution of proceeds, and the documentation you will want behind the sale price.
A trustee who sold at a defensible, documented price with notice properly served is in a very different position from one who did not, if a beneficiary raises a question eighteen months later. The paperwork around the sale is not bureaucracy; it is the trustee’s own protection.
I prepare the valuation side of that documentation for trustees and their attorneys — retrospective opinions of value, written net analyses, and a record of how the price was arrived at. The rest belongs with the attorney, and I am happy to work alongside one. California only permits a broker to pay compensation for licensed activity to licensed persons, so no referral fee moves in either direction, which I think makes the relationship cleaner rather than more awkward.
The deadline clock computes every one of these from an actual date of death, including the statute behind each, and exports them to your calendar.