The Werner Law Firm, PC

Focus and practice areas

Estate planning and probate anchor the work at this California firm. The team drafts living trusts and wills, and it handles probate administration and estate settlement for families closing out an estate. Powers of attorney and healthcare directives sit within the same planning work. The firm also takes wrongful death cases.

Probate alternatives are part of that estate focus. The firm helps clients set up living trusts as a way to keep assets out of probate court after a death. In my opinion that pairing of planning documents on one side and probate work on the other gives the firm a clear view of both ends of the same process.

How the team is built

Four attorneys appear on the firm's team page, and the line of succession runs through one family. L. Rob Werner founded the practice in 1975 and remains listed as its founder. In 2009 he brought his son, Troy Werner, into the firm as an attorney.

Troy Werner has led the firm as managing attorney for more than ten years. He formed Probate Superheroes, a probate-focused service that helps clients through probate and with setting up living trusts to avoid it. Caley Garrison and Grace Lim-Ayres complete the listed attorney team.

Reach across Southern and Central California

Ten offices give the firm a wide footprint across the region. The main office is in Santa Clarita, with further locations in Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Newport Beach, Encino, Lancaster, Oxnard, Pasadena, Santa Barbara, and Simi Valley. That spread reaches a long stretch of coast and inland valley.

The firm offers services in English and Spanish, which widens the pool of clients it can help directly. Bilingual service carries weight in estate and probate work, where clients read and sign documents that decide how property moves to the next generation. It also provides initial consultations for people weighing their estate planning or probate options. As a reviewer, I read that geographic range as a sign the firm works with clients well beyond its home city.

What these matters usually involve

Estate planning and probate follow fairly set paths in California, and knowing the shape helps in reading what a firm like this does day to day. A living trust moves assets into a trust during a person's lifetime, so those assets can pass to named beneficiaries without a separate court process. The person who creates the trust is usually the trustee while alive, then a successor trustee steps in. A will names who receives property and who administers the estate, and it can also name guardians for minor children. Estate plans tend to be revisited over time, after a marriage, a new child, or a change in what a person owns.

Probate is the court-supervised process for settling an estate after a death. It generally runs through several steps: a petition filed with the probate court, notice to heirs and creditors, an inventory of assets, payment of valid debts and taxes, and distribution of what remains to heirs. In California the process can take many months, and the court oversees each major step. Estates held in a properly funded living trust often skip much of that, which is the practical reason many families plan ahead.

How a living trust changes the picture

Setting up a trust document is one step; funding it is another. Funding means retitling accounts and property into the trust's name, so the trust actually holds them. A trust that is signed but left unfunded can still send assets through probate, so the follow-through matters. This overlap is part of why estate planning and probate often live under one roof, as they do here.

Documents that work during life

Powers of attorney and healthcare directives cover decisions made while a person is still living. A financial power of attorney names someone to handle money and property matters if the signer becomes unable to. A healthcare directive records medical wishes and names an agent to speak for the patient. Both take effect during life, which sets them apart from a will.

Wrongful death claims move on a different track: a civil case brought by surviving family members after a death caused by another party. The firm lists this alongside its estate work, which extends its reach into related litigation. These claims carry their own filing rules and deadlines in California courts, and they often turn on proving fault and measuring a family's loss.

What the record shows

The public history here is a long one by directory standards. A firm founded in 1975 and now run by the founder's son carries a continuity that stretches across two generations. In my opinion the clearest thread on the site is the tight focus on estate planning, probate, and the documents that connect them.

The team page names four attorneys, with Troy Werner as managing attorney. The listed languages are English and Spanish. The firm handles trusts, wills, probate, powers of attorney, healthcare directives, and wrongful death claims from its ten offices across Southern and Central California.

Practice ranges within the attorney roster

The individual attorney records add detail that the firmwide practice summary does not capture. L. Rob Werner lists probate litigation and personal injury among his practice focuses. His profile also identifies trust administration, which places post-creation trust work within his own background. The record provides no representative cases or results, so those entries are useful as indicators of subject matter rather than measures of courtroom volume.

Troy Werner has an individual practice profile that reaches into bankruptcy and guardianship and conservatorship matters. Personal injury also appears in his record. Those areas sit beside his work involving trusts and estates. In this reviewer's view, it is important to keep that information tied to Troy Werner because the record does not state that every attorney at the firm handles each of those matters.

Caley Garrison has a narrower stated focus. Her attorney record identifies estate planning without adding litigation or other practice categories. Grace Lim-Ayres is named as an attorney, but the supplied record gives no biography, education, or individual practice focus for her. That gap limits any closer assessment of how her work fits within the team.

Educational background in the attorney profiles

The available profiles identify law schools for three members of the attorney roster. L. Rob Werner earned his law degree from Southwestern University School of Law in 1975. Troy Werner earned his JD from Southwestern Law School in 2009. Caley Garrison attended McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. No law school or graduation year is supplied for Grace Lim-Ayres.

The record does not provide confirmed admission years for these attorneys. It is therefore more precise to rely on the stated JD years for L. Rob Werner and Troy Werner rather than treat those dates as bar admission dates.

The listed Santa Clarita address

The directory record places the firm at 27433 Tourney Rd in Santa Clarita. Caley Garrison's biography identifies her as an attorney with the firm in Valencia, California. The supplied material does not assign particular lawyers or practice areas to individual offices, so it does not support conclusions about which matters are handled at the Tourney Road location.