Keyes Law Group, PC

Focus and practice areas

Estate planning is the core of the firm's work, and it runs through the services listed on the site. Keyes Law Group prepares wills, revocable living trusts and irrevocable trusts. It also drafts special needs trusts and dynasty trusts, along with the documents that support a plan: advanced health care directives, financial powers of attorney and durable powers of attorney for health care.

Each of those trusts answers a different need. A special needs trust holds money for a person with a disability while keeping public benefits intact. A dynasty trust passes assets across more than one generation. An irrevocable trust is hard to change once signed, which is part of how it moves assets out of a taxable estate.

Beyond drafting, the firm handles trust administration and probate, the court process for settling an estate. Elder law and Medi-Cal benefits and planning appear on the site as well, next to limited conservatorships, inheritance matters and wealth planning for family transfers. In my opinion, that mix points to work built around two moments: families planning ahead, and families settling an estate after a death.

How the team is built

Two attorneys carry the legal work, and their profiles cover different ends of estate planning. A group of support staff handles coordination, paralegal work and operations.

Elijah Keyes

Elijah Keyes founded the firm and has over 15 years of experience.He holds certification in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law through the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. The State Bar grants that certification after an examination and a review of a lawyer's experience, so it points to sustained work in the field.

His education includes an LL.M. in Taxation from Golden Gate University School of Law, earned in 2010, and a J.D. from the same school in 2009. He completed a B.A. at San Jose State University in 2005. The practice areas listed under his name include estate planning, special needs planning, retirement accounts, Medi-Cal planning, conservatorships and guardianship, and fiduciary representation. The tax training shows in that list, since retirement accounts and Medi-Cal planning both turn on detailed rules.

Ashley Polston

Ashley Polston practices as an estate planning attorney and has over 17 years of experience. Her work covers complex estate planning, including charitable remainder trusts and irrevocable life insurance trusts, and she works with high-net-worth individuals. Those tools tend to come up when an estate is large enough that tax and charitable giving drive the plan.

She earned her Juris Doctor from Washburn University School of Law in 2005 and graduated summa cum laude from Pittsburg State University. She is admitted to the State Bar of California and to the United States Supreme Court.

As a reviewer, I read the two profiles as covering different ends of the same field: everyday plans, and complex, tax-driven trusts. Behind the attorneys, the support team fills out the daily work. Kim Krupski is the estate planning coordinator, and Kathy Bonadonna is the trust and probate paralegal. Khouloud Dawahi works as a law clerk, and Christina Pittman-Keyes is the director of marketing and operations.

The documents behind a plan

The site lists a short set of documents as the building blocks of a plan. A will directs who receives property and, for parents, who raises minor children. A trust holds assets under set terms and, depending on its type, can carry them past probate or across generations.

Two of the documents deal with incapacity during the client's life. A financial power of attorney lets a named person handle money matters when the client cannot. A durable power of attorney for health care, paired with an advanced health care directive, lets someone make medical choices and records the client's wishes for care. Listing these next to wills and trusts signals a plan meant to cover both incapacity and death.

A plan usually ties these documents together. The trust holds the main assets, the will catches anything left outside it, and the powers of attorney cover the years when the client is alive but unable to act. Reviewed as a set, the documents on the site track a full plan for both money and medical care.

How the firm meets clients

The firm serves clients across the San Francisco Bay Area and keeps its office in Milpitas. The office in Milpitas places the firm in the South Bay portion of the region it serves. Where reaching an office is hard, the legal team can meet a client at home or at a care facility. Those visits fit the work, since estate and elder law clients are sometimes ill, aging or managing a relative's affairs.

The firm's team speaks Spanish, which widens who can sit with an attorney and follow the paperwork. The firm offers an initial 30 minute consultation for people weighing whether to hire it. It also keeps an online presence on Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook, where it posts estate planning content.

What these matters usually involve

Estate planning and probate follow fairly set steps, which helps explain the documents the firm lists. A revocable living trust holds assets during a person's life and directs where they go afterward. In many cases it keeps the estate out of probate, because the trust owns the property while the person is alive. The steps matter, because a plan that skips one can leave assets stuck in court.

A will covers property the trust leaves out, and it names guardians for minor children. Powers of attorney and health care directives take effect when someone can no longer make financial or medical decisions. Probate is the court-supervised process for settling an estate whose assets fall outside a trust, and it can run for months as the court confirms the will, the estate pays its debts and the executor distributes what remains.

Where elder law fits

Trust administration is the parallel job for assets already held in a trust, and it usually stays out of court. Medi-Cal planning deals with the eligibility rules for long-term care, which is why it connects to elder law and special needs work. Fiduciary representation, listed under the founding attorney, means advising the trustee or executor who has to carry out a plan. Limited conservatorships, another area the firm names, let a court appoint someone to help an adult with a developmental disability handle specific decisions.