Beyond the grim inevitability of death lies an even greater horror: probate!

At least, that's the nightmare scenario evoked by some aggressive sellers of trusts and profitable insurance products called annuities.

Probate is the legal process by which titles are transferred after a property owner dies. With the owner departed, a judge signs the "pink slip" to transfer ownership of the assets left behind.

But getting to that point can take months and cost thousands of dollars, especially in California. While other states have streamlined probate, California still requires a judge to tightly monitor a probate process laden with fixed fees, formal notices and repetitive court hearings.

So, many estate planning strategies aim to avoid probate. And hard sales pitches for trusts and annuities frequently emphasize the promise of easy detours around probate.

So how awful is probate?

Marsha Black, a Benicia benefits consultant, says probate is "cumbersome" and a "bloody pain in the neck." After Black's mother died in the spring of 1995, she found herself bogged down in probate trying to distribute an estate consisting mainly of $200,000 in cash. In that probate, "the 'unwritten' folklore-oriented processes they made us do created $1,000 in expenses in addition to statutory legal fees," even though there was no dispute among the heirs, Black wrote to a state panel considering probate reforms.

But Black came to believe that there's more to probate than aggravation. When she recently served as the executor of another estate of about $200,000, a probate judge helped head off a lawsuit from a contentious inheritor who might have challenged the terms of a trust, she says.

Each year tens of thousands of Californians end up in probate courtrooms sorting out the affairs of a recently departed relative or friend. In Contra Costa County, the probate section of the Superior Court receives approximately 15 petitions for estate administration each week, or nearly 800 a year, according to Probate Commissioner Don Green.

California probate starts with the filing of a petition and proceeds with an inventory and appraisal of assets done by a probate referee, a lawyer appointed by the state controller. The law mandates extensive notices to creditors and potential beneficiaries. Each step requires court appearances. Small forests of paperwork accumulate in court files. State law sets fees for a range of services done along the way.

Fees paid to lawyers and others involved in the probate process can take a substantial bite out of an inheritance. While some of the fees written into law can be negotiated, inheritors face statutory rates ranging from $8,400 on an estate with a gross value of $100,000 to $48,000 on an estate worth $1 million -- a level within reach of many local homeowners with a lifetime's savings.

Three times a week Green presides over estate administration cases in Contra Costa County's Probate Court, where a parade of routine procedural filings is sprinkled with moments of pathos and frustration.

"Formal probates mostly are a pretty simple event," Green says. "If the worst thing that happens to you in your life (is going through a probate), you have had a blessed life."

But when the three sons of Arthur Michael Kaufman, a Danville resident who died on June 8, 2002, pause to count their blessings, probate probably isn't high on the list.

The three brothers -- all immigration attorneys working in the same San Francisco office -- sought to navigate a path through probate court in order to distribute the $460,000 estate that their father left in various bank and money market accounts.

It looked simple enough. Their mother had died in 2001 and the two-page will that their father signed in 1975 directed that if predeceased by his wife all "estate and property" should go to his three sons "share and share alike."

The brothers decided they "would be perfect to do (probate) ourselves," said David Kaufman, the youngest brother, who sought to shepherd the case through Green's courtroom.

But probate can stump even an attorney, especially one who lacks the requisite special training or experience. "There is a complexity that is not obvious on the surface," says Kaufman.

Unexpected tax issues and procedural quirks -- such as hearing notices rejected as inadequate because they were hand-delivered rather than mailed -- bogged things down. "Every time I would make a simple mistake, two months" of delays resulted, Kaufman says ruefully. Ultimately, the probate proceeding dragged on for nearly two years.

Kaufman has relatively mild criticisms of the probate process and remains wary of probate avoidance tactics or broad reform proposals. "In retrospect, I am embarrassed that it took so long," he says. "It was not that complex."

Others are not so forgiving of probate. "Routine things are bogging down" the probate system, says Edward Halbach, retired dean of Boalt Hall law school at UC Berkeley. California has "built a system to deal with the horror stories." Instead, it should ensure judicial supervision of difficult or controversial cases but free others to move forward quickly outside of court, he says.

Judicial supervision "adds to the costs in normal probate with very little benefit," says John McCabe, legislative director of the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.

Green argues that the current probate laws are needed to protect vulnerable inheritors from predators and accuses supporters of probate simplification of advocating "social Darwinism" that would leave the weak and vulnerable to fend for themselves. Shenanigans by those charged with managing and distributing assets can be short-circuited when potential wrongdoers "start out by being looked at by somebody in a black robe," he says.

But Fresno estate planning lawyer Robert Sullivan dismisses California's current system as "court-supervised baby-sitting" that could easily be simplified or omitted in as many as 95 percent of all cases. As chairman of the state Bar Association's estate planning section, Sullivan in 1995 helped launch an attempt to reform California's probate code. That push failed to generate broad interest and eventually petered out in early 1999 under the weight of opposition from some lawyers, including Green.

Critiques of probate continue a long tradition dating to at least 1965, when a rabble-rousing estate planning lawyer named Norman Dacey published "How to Avoid Probate" and saw it soar into bestsellerdom.

Across the nation, probate "has been the repository of a lot of graft and corruption over the years, and cronyism," says Paula Monopoli, a University of Maryland law professor and author of a recent book on probate.

Theresa Meehan, program director of HALT -- An Organization of Americans for Legal Reform, says an estimated $10 billion in estates waiting to be transferred from baby boomers to inheritors -- and the resulting fees -- explains why probate reform has languished.

Nolo Press, a Berkeley legal publisher, counts 15 states that have adopted laws based on a national model drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws and known as the Uniform Probate Code. Such informal probate systems, which don't require a judge's direct involvement in most routine matters, seem to be "functioning pretty well without ancient tradition" to reinforce them, Halbach says.

Kenneth Weiss, a Louisiana estate planning lawyer, says that probate there requires only a single court filing with a fee of $200, and some small property transfer fees. "Here we hardly ever do living trusts for probate concerns because our (probate system) is so cheap and simple," Weiss says.

California has also adopted some measures to streamline probate, including provisions "allowing small estates to pass quickly and efficiently with minimal court supervision," says Nat Sterling of the California Law Revision Commission. Estates must have less than $100,000 in gross assets to qualify, according to Nolo Press.

Still, most experts agree that avoiding California probate -- while insufficient to solve all the financial, tax and legal issues that must be addressed in a viable estate plan -- remains an important estate planning goal for many.

Wealthy individuals often make arrangements to avoid probate. The result, says San Jose estate planning attorney James Quillinan, is that "poor people end up in probate (while) rich people use trusts."

That, Sullivan says, has left probate as a sort of "ghetto hospital" for the poor and uninformed. While he still favors simplification of the system, for now probate reform in California looks like a long shot.

But Sullivan and other probate reform advocates haven't generated enough public support for wholesale changes. "There are a lot of people who have a vested interest in maintaining the system," including probate lawyers, referees, court employees and newspapers, that get revenue from publication of probate's many mandatory legal notices, Sullivan says.

Bill McGovern, a retired UCLA Law School professor, says that resistance is reinforced in California by a compensation structure written into state law that ties payments to the size of an estate rather than the actual costs of required services. That "can produce some very high fees," he says.

Although no complete statistics are available that show the revenue at stake for California probate lawyers, reports filed with the state controller show that fewer than 150 probate referees collected $6.7 million in fees for doing 19,000 appraisals during the most recent fiscal year.

With public sentiment muted, those who work inside the system are reluctant to support calls for a big makeover. "Lawyers know the process," says Monopoli, the law professor and author of a book on probate. "They don't want to change it."

That has created a natural selling point for aggressive marketers of trusts and annuities. Unable to persuasively argue that they have found a way to avoid death, these sellers make avoiding probate sound nearly as desirable.

Rick Jurgens covers the housing, development and energy industries. Reach him at 925-943-8088 or at rjurgens@cctimes.com

Planning to Die

A growing senior population and accumulated wealth make the East Bay a big market for estate planners who preach the usefulness of trusts and the perils of probate. In this three-day series, the Times looks at the limitations of trusts, the background of one high-profile trust seller, the reality of probate and the steps a savvy consumer can take to avoid abuse and get good value for each dollar spent on estate planning.

SUNDAY: Some sellers of trusts prey on unsophisticated seniors. You can find this story online at www.contracostatimes.com

TODAY: Despite rigid rules that can cause delays and boost costs, probate prevents some abuses.

Good estate planning requires preparation, shopping around and judicious spending.