Probate is the court supervised process of administering an estate of a deceased person. All the assets of the decedent that were not subject to a non-probate transfer, such as a living trust, joint tenancy or a payable on death account, will be subject to Probate. That means that if a person dies with only a will or with no estate plan in place, the individual’s estate will have to be probated. In California, the Probate process usually takes a year or longer and can be very expensive. The personal representative of the estate has many duties, including inventorying assets, dealing with creditors, sales of assets, handling beneficiary disputes and final distribution of assets to the beneficiaries. These duties can be time consuming and overwhelming.