Cal Estate Planning, PC

Focus and practice areas

The firm names five practice areas on its home page: estate planning, probate, trust administration, Medi-Cal and long-term care, and special needs trusts. These areas overlap in practice. A person plans an estate while alive, and the same documents guide what happens through probate or trust administration after a death.

Cal Estate Planning, PC organizes its estate planning material into several topics. The site compares trusts with wills, describes trusts for married couples, explains particular trust mechanisms, lists the added documents that complete a plan, and covers Medi-Cal trusts. Outside listings describe the same core work: drafting a last will, and setting up revocable and irrevocable trusts.

In my opinion, the value of this work shows up years later, when a family reads the documents and follows them. A will directs who receives what and names the person who will carry out those wishes. A trust holds assets under a set of instructions and can pass property to beneficiaries through a trustee.

Most estate plans in California include more than a will or trust. A durable power of attorney names someone to handle finances, and an advance health care directive records a person's wishes for medical care. The firm's site groups documents like these under the additional papers that round out a plan.

Probate is the court process that settles a will and transfers what a person owned. It runs through a county court, and it involves filings, formal notice to heirs and creditors, and a judge's oversight of the final distribution. The process can take many months, and the length depends on the size of the estate and on any dispute over the will.

Trust administration follows a separate path. A trustee gathers the assets held in a trust, pays valid debts and taxes, keeps records, and distributes what remains to the beneficiaries, typically as a private process. Cal Estate Planning names this among its core services, alongside the estate planning work that creates the trust in the first place.

Medi-Cal and long-term care planning deals with the rules that decide who qualifies for state help with nursing home and in-home care costs. Special needs trusts hold funds for a person with a disability while protecting that person's access to public benefits. Both areas turn on detailed eligibility rules, and both reward careful planning well before care is needed.

How the team is built

The firm's team page lists four attorneys with full biographies, two more attorneys, a paralegal, and three office administrators. Laurie Shigekuni runs the firm as managing partner.

Laurie Shigekuni

Laurie Shigekuni earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1983, with honors in sociology and a second major in biology. She graduated from UC Hastings College of the Law in 1989 and joined the California Bar the same year. Before she opened her own practice, she spent six years in civil litigation at a legal services organization in Oakland. She has concentrated on estate work since 1996, which gives her close to three decades in wills, trusts, probate, and trust administration.

The partners and senior attorney

Kevin Mo is a partner. He was born in Taipei, Taiwan, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area as an infant, and is fluent in Mandarin Chinese. He graduated from New York University in 2016 and from UC Law San Francisco, formerly UC Hastings, in 2021.

Sako Yasuda is also a partner. She was born in Tokyo, grew up in a suburb of Seattle, and is bilingual in Japanese and English. She holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and business from the University of Puget Sound and a Juris Doctor from Santa Clara University.

Martha Bridegam is a senior attorney who has been with the office since 2007. She holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard University and a law degree from UC Law San Francisco. Her work as an attorney and writer outside the firm has covered public benefits, housing and homelessness, and the history of land use in the West.

The team page also names Amy Venugopal and Michael Saito as attorneys, Kate Legarda as a paralegal, and Eunice Lee, Anthony Ismail, and Grace Yee as office administrators. Michael Mikio Yee Saito practices as a lawyer in San Francisco.

Languages in the office

Two of the firm's attorneys bring a second language to client work. Kevin Mo is fluent in Mandarin Chinese, and Sako Yasuda is bilingual in Japanese and English. Estate planning turns on personal and family detail, so a client who is more comfortable in Mandarin or Japanese can talk those details through with an attorney directly.

Where the firm practices

Cal Estate Planning keeps its main office in San Francisco. The firm's pages also list a satellite office in San Mateo and, on the team page, an office in Pasadena. That spread puts attorneys within reach of clients across the San Francisco Peninsula and, through the Pasadena location, in the Los Angeles area.

One detail is worth a check before a first visit. Two different San Mateo addresses appear across the site, one on the home and team pages and another on the contact page. A client heading to the San Mateo office should confirm the current location before travelling.

Starting the process

The firm offers a free 15 minute estate planning consultation, which its home page presents as the first step for new clients. A short first conversation like this usually covers what a person owns, who they want to provide for, and which documents fit their situation. It also gives both sides a chance to see whether the match works before any formal engagement.

The firm keeps a small, named team, and the same attorneys appear across its practice areas. In practice that means a client can hold one point of contact from the first plan through the administration that may follow. As a reviewer, I read a practice like this by its consistency, and the roster here stays steady from the estate planning work into probate, trust administration, Medi-Cal, and special needs matters.

The website's copyright notice runs from 2003, though the site does not state a founding year. Laurie Shigekuni has concentrated on estate work since 1996, the same span of wills, trusts, probate, and trust administration that the firm handles today.