Asset Protection & Elder Law Center

Focus and practice areas

The work centers on the transfer and protection of family wealth. The Asset Protection & Elder Law Center handles estate planning, probate, trust administration, asset protection, special needs planning, and elder law with Medi-Cal planning. It also lists advanced tax planning among its services. The firm uses a shorter name for itself as well, Asset Protection Center, or APC.

Estate planning here means a familiar set of documents, and each one does a specific job. A revocable living trust holds title to assets during life and passes them at death without a court step. A will names guardians for minor children and directs whatever the trust does not cover. A financial power of attorney lets a chosen person manage money if the owner cannot. An advance healthcare directive records medical wishes and names someone to speak for the patient. The firm prepares all four, with the aim of keeping an estate out of California probate court.

In my opinion, the focus on probate avoidance marks the firm's likely client: families who want an estate settled privately and handled without a public court file. That preference drives most of the estate planning choices the firm describes.

How the team is built

Two partners sit at the top of the roster. Patrick P. Phancao and Shadi Ala'i Shaffer formed the firm together, and both practice as partners. Valerie L. Pasion works as an associate attorney, and Shilpa Bhatt practices as an attorney with the firm.

Phancao carries the fuller public record of the four. He is admitted to practice in California, Florida, and the District of Columbia, and he earned his J.D. at California Western School of Law after a B.S. in physiology from UC Santa Barbara. His route into estate work ran through varied ground: he began as Assistant Legal Counsel to a French banking institution, then worked as Legal Counsel for a pharmaceutical company in Los Angeles. His earlier practice touched California's White Collar Crime Division and a 2021 federal bank fraud trial in the Southern District of New York.

Named support staff fill out the office. Taline Arthur works as senior paralegal and Niki Moosavi as paralegal, while Carol Carranza runs the office as manager and client service director and Jay Singh handles administrative duties. As a reviewer, I take a named support roster of this size as a sign of matters that carry real paperwork behind the attorney work.

Elder law and Medi-Cal planning

Long-term care sits at the center of the firm's elder law work. The firm advises on qualifying for Medi-Cal, the California program that can help pay for skilled nursing care, and it plans around the state's three-year look-back period.

Medi-Cal is means-tested, so eligibility turns on what an applicant owns and what they have recently given away. The look-back rule lets the state review asset transfers made before an application, and a transfer for less than fair value can delay coverage. Timing shapes much of this planning as a result.

Special needs planning runs next to the Medi-Cal work. The firm drafts special needs trusts, which hold assets for a disabled family member so the funds do not disturb benefits tied to income or resources. A trustee controls the money and spends it on approved extras that sit outside the basic support the government already covers. The drafting is where the care goes, because the wording decides whether benefits stay intact.

Asset protection, business, and tax work

The firm's name points to a second strand of its work. It advises on domestic and offshore asset protection structures, the arrangements people use to place assets beyond easy reach of later claims. Domestic tools include certain trusts and entities formed under state law, while offshore tools rely on foreign jurisdictions with their own rules. People often set these up well before any claim arises, since transfers made under pressure draw closer scrutiny.

The about page also names business incorporation and advanced tax planning. Business incorporation covers forming an entity, such as a corporation or a limited liability company, and setting the paperwork that keeps it separate from its owners. Advanced tax planning, in the estate context, generally works around gift and estate tax exposure as wealth passes between generations. The firm lists these services beside its trust work, and the overlap points to owners whose assets include a company.

Probate and trust administration

Both of these jobs deal with an estate once its owner can no longer manage it. Probate moves an estate through the court when no plan keeps it clear, and the process runs on a filed petition, an inventory of assets, notice to creditors, and distribution to heirs. Court probate is a public record and often takes months to close.

Trust administration does similar work outside court when a living trust already holds the assets. A successor trustee gathers the assets, values them, pays debts and taxes, and passes what remains to the beneficiaries. The firm takes on both tracks, and it also builds the trusts these matters later administer.

Where the firm works

Two offices anchor the firm in Orange County. The main office is in Costa Mesa, and a second office operates in Laguna Beach. The firm says it serves clients throughout California, including Los Angeles and Orange County, and it offers consultations by video or phone. The site does not list a founding year, so the firm's age is not stated on its public pages.

Attorney backgrounds beyond the founding account

The other attorney profiles add useful detail about the firm's working depth. Shadi Ala'i Shaffer earned her J.D. from California Western School of Law in 2001. Her stated practice covers estate planning and trusts, along with probate and trust administration. Elder law and asset protection complete her listed focus. That range places one of the founding partners across both planning work and the administration that follows a death.

Valerie L. Pasion attended UCLA School of Law and the University of California, Irvine. Her profile identifies elder law, estate planning, and probate as her areas of practice. The record does not provide her graduation or admission year, so it offers no basis for measuring her tenure by date.

Shilpa Bhatt brings the most detailed academic history among the attorneys beyond Phancao. She earned a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of California, Davis in 2000. She then received an M.A. in Political Science from California State University, Fullerton in 2003 and her J.D. from Whittier Law School in 2006.

Guardianship and contested probate work

Bhatt's profile identifies work that extends into guardianship and conservatorship, as well as probate litigation. It also names estate administration, trusts, and wills. Those details matter because they place court-related family matters within the experience of a named attorney rather than leaving them under a broad probate label. Her profile does not describe particular disputes or reported decisions, so the record supports the practice categories but no claims about case results.

Phancao's listed focus also includes guardianship and conservatorship. The overlap between his profile and Bhatt's gives the office more than one named attorney whose stated work reaches those proceedings. Bhatt alone has probate litigation expressly listed in the supplied record.

Fees and direct contact

Many trust administration matters are handled on a flat fee basis. The word "many" leaves room for a different arrangement in matters that fall outside that group, and the record does not state the amount or what each fee includes. A prospective client would need to confirm the scope for the particular trust before comparing costs.

The directory record gives the Costa Mesa office's street address as 3187 Red Hill Ave and lists (714) 966-2646 as the firm's telephone number. These details provide a direct contact point for the main office.