Small Estate Affidavits in 2026: Building the File and Making the Institution Honor It

Susie Coons, Co-Owner | McDonald Coons Law Group, APC

Susie Coons is a co-owner of McDonald Coons Law Group, APC, in Bakersfield, California, where her practice concentrates on estate planning, trust administration, trust litigation, and probate. She represents individuals, families, fiduciaries, and beneficiaries through every stage of settling an estate, and serves clients in both English and Spanish.

• Education & Credentials

Susie holds her Juris Doctor from The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law and is licensed by the State Bar of California. She practices from McDonald Coons Law Group’s Bakersfield office, a firm built to concentrate exclusively on estate planning, probate administration, trust administration, and the establishment of conservatorships — a focus that allows her to work these matters at depth rather than as an adjunct to a general practice.

• Recognition & Leadership

Susie serves as Treasurer of the Probate Section of the Kern County Bar Association, an elected officer role within her local probate bar. She co-founded McDonald Coons Law Group with Stevie McDonald and serves as the firm’s Vice President and co-owner, sharing responsibility for the firm’s practice standards, client service, and operations.

• Professional Involvement

Through her role with the Kern County Bar Association’s Probate Section, Susie stays engaged with the practitioners, court staff, and procedures that shape probate practice in Kern County. She also volunteers her time with local Mock Trial competitions, working with student teams on advocacy and courtroom skills. Before co-founding McDonald Coons Law Group, she practiced as an attorney with Rossi Law Group.

• Experience

Susie’s practice covers the full arc of estate administration: intake and asset analysis, identifying which assets pass through probate and which transfer outside it, small estate and simplified transfer procedures, formal probate administration, trust funding and administration, and disputes that arise between fiduciaries and beneficiaries. At McDonald Coons Law Group this work sits alongside the firm’s broader practice in wills, trusts, special needs trusts, guardianships, conservatorships, and living wills.

Because the firm serves clients in both English and Spanish, Susie regularly works with families for whom the probate system is unfamiliar territory — a population that often arrives without documentation in order and without a clear picture of what the process requires. That experience informs a practical, step-by-step approach to building a complete file.

Jared R. Clemence, Attorney | Eagle Heritage Law PC

Jared R. Clemence is a Bakersfield, California probate and trust attorney who practices at Eagle Heritage Law PC centers on small estate transfers, decedent estate administration, trust administration, and probate litigation. He writes regularly on California small estate procedures, including what to do when a bank refuses a California small estate affidavit and the mistakes that sink Kern County DE-310 primary residence petitions.

• Education & Credentials

Jared earned his J.D. from Monterey College of Law and is licensed by the State Bar of California. He completed his undergraduate studies at Drexel University, where he taught graduate-level mathematics in the Mathematics Department’s tutoring center and developed statistical analysis software for institutional survey data. He also holds a California real estate license and has worked in California real estate since 2021, affiliated with Watson Realty Services Inc. in Bakersfield — a dual credential that shapes his approach to estates holding real property.

• Recognition & Leadership

He is the author of No Will? No Problem! published January 5, 2023, and available through Amazon and the Kindle Store. Following the book’s publication, he was accepted as a 2023 member of Lawyers of Distinction, and his work has been featured in The New York Times. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Kern County Bar Association.

• Professional Involvement

Jared publishes an ongoing series of practitioner- and family-facing articles on California probate, small estate transfers, trust administration, and real estate law, covering topics such as bank refusals of small estate affidavits, probate sales with court confirmation, managing access to digital estates, a trustee’s duty to inform beneficiaries, and buying out siblings from an inherited house. He has also served on the Bakersfield Chamber of Commerce’s Business Development Committee.

• Experience

Before founding Eagle Heritage Law, Jared spent four years at Coleman & Horowitt, LLP, a Primerus member firm with offices in Fresno and Bakersfield, representing clients in probate litigation, estate planning, unlawful detainer, and real estate litigation.

His probate and inheritance practice covers small estate transfers, decedent estate administration, trust administration and litigation, beneficiary representation, and undue influence and financial elder abuse cases. On the real estate side, he handles title disputes, partition actions, quiet title lawsuits, and unlawful detainers, and he also practices family law and childcare license defense.

SESSION 1 – Building the Small Estate Affidavit File Under the New State Thresholds | 2:30pm – 3:30pm

This session covers the 2024–2025 wave of state threshold increases reshaping small estate affidavit eligibility, the mechanics of accurate asset classification and valuation, and the documentation requirements for building a complete, institution-ready file. Attorneys will learn to distinguish probate from non-probate assets, apply filing-date versus death-date triggers across key jurisdictions, and avoid the most common errors that invalidate or delay affidavits. Practitioners gain practical competency in intake analysis, threshold calculation, and file assembly under the new statutory frameworks in California, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, and other high-population states.

BREAK | 3:30pm – 3:40pm

SESSION 2 – When the Bank Refuses the Affidavit: Escalation, Enforcement, and Fee Recovery | 3:40pm – 4:40pm

This session equips attorneys to respond when a financial institution refuses to honor a properly executed small estate affidavit. Attendees will learn a structured pre-litigation escalation protocol, the statutory enforcement mechanisms available in California, Nebraska, Illinois, Washington, and UPC-adoption states, and how to invoke mandatory and discretionary fee-shifting provisions to recover attorney fees. Practitioners leave with a demand-letter framework, an understanding of institutional safe harbors, and litigation filing considerations for compelled-transfer actions.