Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Normally when a will and living trust are prepared together they are complementary parts of a unified estate plan. If they are contradictory in any way, there is no way to evaluate the impact of that without reviewing the documents and the relevant history of the estate plan. The one thing I can tell you is that changing the trustee on the trust would normally do absolutely nothing to the validity of the will.

The trust would probably be the controlling docment, assuming the assets where transferred to the trust.

A will prepared in conjunction with a trust is normally a pour over will.This type of will is designed to allow assets that cannot be otherwise titled into the trust to "pour over" into the trust at the death of the trustor. Because these documents are designed to work together, it is unusual for someone to change the successor trustee and not have also changed the executor of the pour over will. Ordinarily, it is preferable to have both the successor trustee and the executor be the same individual or individuals. If all titled assets are in the name of the trust, the trust document would likely be the controlling document. I agree that you should have an attorney review both documents.