Temmerman, Cilley, Kohlmann & Norcia, LLP.

Focus and practice areas

The firm handles estate law for individuals and families across San Jose, Silicon Valley, and the East Bay. Its work covers four connected areas: estate planning, probate and estate administration, estate litigation, and elder law. Each area draws on the same body of California law that governs how property passes and how people are cared for in later life. In my opinion, keeping all four under one roof gives clients one place to turn as their circumstances change.

Estate law reaches people at very different moments. A young family writing a first will has different needs from an adult child sorting out a parent's affairs, and a beneficiary who feels shut out of a trust has different needs again. The firm's four areas line up with those moments, so the firm can help at the planning stage and again if a matter reaches court.

Inside the estate planning work

Estate planning is the entry point for many clients. The firm prepares wills, revocable living trusts, powers of attorney, and advance health care directives. It also handles beneficiary services for retirement accounts, which set who receives an IRA or a 401(k) outside the will itself. For clients with retirement savings, those beneficiary designations often control more money than the will does. These documents work together to say who manages a person's affairs and who inherits.

How the documents fit together

A revocable living trust holds assets during a person's life and passes them at death without a probate case. A will covers property the trust does not hold and names guardians for minor children. Powers of attorney and advance health care directives take effect when someone can no longer act or decide alone. The firm's planning work brings these pieces into a single plan.

Plans also change over time. A marriage, a new child, a move to California, or the sale of a business can each call for updated documents. Because the firm both writes plans and administers them later, the firm can revise a document today and put it to work years from now.

What probate and administration involve

Probate and estate administration is where a plan meets the court. When a person dies, someone has to gather the assets, pay debts and taxes, and distribute what remains. In California, an estate that is not fully held in a trust often passes through probate, a court-supervised process that can run for months. The firm guides executors and administrators through the filings, notices, and accountings that the court asks for.

Administration also covers trusts that stay out of court. A successor trustee still has to value assets, notify beneficiaries, and account for what the trust holds. This work connects to the firm's litigation practice, since questions often surface once beneficiaries see how an estate is being handled.

Elder law and contested estates

The elder law practice covers conservatorship and guardianship, where a court appoints someone to manage the affairs of an adult or a child who needs that help. These cases involve medical evidence, court hearings, and ongoing reports once an appointment is made. The firm also handles Medi-Cal planning, which addresses how long-term care costs are met under California's version of Medicaid, a question that grows pressing as care needs rise.

On the litigation side, the firm represents beneficiaries, contests wills and trusts, and takes matters through mediation and arbitration. Will and trust contests usually turn on questions of mental capacity, undue influence, or how a document was signed. Many of these cases run through the probate court, and a good number settle through mediation before a full hearing. Having planning and litigation in the same firm means the lawyers who read these documents day to day are the ones who argue over them.

How the team is built

The site names more than a dozen attorneys. Robert E. Temmerman, Jr., James P. Cilley, Patrick A. Kohlmann, and Erin A. Norcia carry the firm's name. The wider roster includes Hengameh Kishani, Shani C. Colson, Kendra I. Conner, Christina P. Tanti, Magdalena A. LaBranch, Maxwell D. Bass, and Jessica I. Neugebauer. Two attorneys, Bart J. Schenone and Barbara A. Beck, are listed as retired.

The firm states that some of its lawyers hold certification from the California Board of Legal Specialization. That board certifies attorneys in defined fields such as estate planning, trust, and probate law, after written testing and peer review. As a reviewer, I read that as a credential worth confirming on each attorney's own page.

Language access is a practical part of the firm's service. The attorneys and staff speak Spanish, Vietnamese, Greek, Chinese, Italian, and French. For families more at ease in another language, that range can make hard estate conversations clearer.

Where the firm works and how clients begin

The firm keeps two offices, one in San Jose and one in Danville. That places it in both Silicon Valley and the East Bay, two areas where high property values mean estate plans often involve real estate and family businesses. Both offices work the same four practice areas, so a client in Danville and a client in San Jose reach the same body of estate law. A client can begin with an initial consultation, and the firm offers the first 30 minutes of that meeting at no charge.

Contact details and listed identity

The directory gives a precise street location for the San Jose office: 2502 Stevens Creek Boulevard. That detail helps a client distinguish the office from businesses with similar names and record the correct destination for an appointment. The listing identifies the legal entity as "Temmerman, Cilley, Kohlmann & Norcia, LLP." Its public name uses the same four surnames and the LLP designation, which provides a consistent identity across the directory entry and the firm's contact information.

Each office has its own telephone number. The directory assigns 408-780-1912 to San Jose and 925-529-3999 to Danville. A prospective client can direct an initial call to the office that fits the preferred location. Existing clients can also retain the relevant number alongside correspondence from that office. From a review standpoint, pairing each number with a named location is more useful than presenting both numbers without an office label. It reduces uncertainty at the point of contact and makes the listing easier to use.

The firm's online address

The listed website is https://www.tcklawfirm.com. The domain uses the initials TCK, drawn from Temmerman, Cilley, and Kohlmann. Readers can compare that domain with the full legal name in the directory before using online contact details. That comparison is a practical identity check when a firm's formal name is considerably longer than its web address.

Taken together, the legal name and website give clients two ways to identify the same firm. The physical address and location-specific numbers then provide the details needed to reach the appropriate office. I find this part of the directory record straightforward because each contact item has a clear purpose. The street address identifies the San Jose destination, while the separate telephone listings direct calls by office. These details are particularly useful for someone who found the firm through a search result and wants to confirm the entity before making contact.