Leticia Martinez - Santa Barbara, CA

Leticia “Leti” Martinez is the Managing Partner and a founding partner of Ambrecht & Martinez, LLP, a California estate planning law firm based in Santa Barbara. She advises individuals, families, business owners, trustees, fiduciaries, and beneficiaries on sophisticated estate planning, trust and estate administration, business succession planning, family governance, charitable planning, and multigenerational wealth preservation.

Leti’s practice focuses on helping clients make thoughtful decisions about how wealth, businesses, real estate, and family responsibilities will be managed and transferred over time. Her clients often have substantial or complex estates involving significant real estate holdings, closely held businesses, investment assets, family entities, trusts, and wealth intended to benefit multiple generations.

Her approach to estate planning is highly individualized. Rather than viewing an estate plan as a collection of documents, Leti works with clients to understand their families, assets, priorities, concerns, and long-term objectives and then develops planning strategies designed around those circumstances.

California Estate Planning

Effective estate planning requires more than preparing a will or living trust.

A comprehensive estate plan may need to coordinate legal documents, asset ownership, beneficiary designations, business interests, tax considerations, incapacity planning, family dynamics, and long-term wealth-transfer goals.

Leti advises California clients on estate plans that may include revocable living trusts, wills, powers of attorney, advance health care directives, irrevocable trusts, gifting strategies, charitable planning, and other sophisticated wealth-transfer structures.

For clients with substantial estates, the planning process may also involve federal estate and gift tax considerations, generation-skipping transfer planning, business succession, family entities, real estate ownership, asset protection, and the long-term management of inherited wealth.

The appropriate structure depends on the client’s assets, family circumstances, tax considerations, and objectives. Leti’s goal is to develop a plan that is technically sound while remaining practical, flexible, and aligned with the client’s priorities.

Estate Planning for High-Net-Worth Families

Families with significant wealth often face planning issues that extend well beyond basic estate documents.

An estate may include multiple residences, commercial or investment real estate, closely held businesses, concentrated investments, family partnerships, limited liability companies, life insurance, retirement assets, charitable interests, and trusts for children or future generations.

Leti works with high-net-worth individuals and families to coordinate these interests as part of a broader estate and wealth-transfer plan.

Planning may involve irrevocable trusts, lifetime gifting strategies, charitable planning, business succession structures, family entities, and other advanced estate planning techniques.

The objective is not simply to transfer wealth. Effective planning should also consider control, flexibility, tax consequences, family dynamics, asset management, succession, and the responsibilities future generations may eventually assume.

Estate Planning for Real Estate Owners

Real estate represents a substantial portion of many California families’ wealth.

Clients may own a primary residence, vacation property, rental properties, commercial real estate, agricultural property, development interests, or multiple properties held through trusts, LLCs, partnerships, or other entities.

Estate planning for real estate owners can raise questions involving ownership structure, management, tax consequences, liability exposure, succession, and the practical challenges of transferring shared property to children or future generations.

Leti helps clients coordinate real estate holdings with their broader estate plans.

Depending on the family’s circumstances, planning may involve trusts, limited liability companies, family entities, gifting strategies, ownership restructuring, and provisions addressing how property will be managed, retained, sold, or distributed.

For families with multiple properties, planning may also require careful discussion about future ownership. Will children want to own property together? Who will make management decisions? How will expenses be allocated? What should happen if one beneficiary wants to retain a property while another wants to sell?

Addressing those questions in advance can be an important part of preserving both family wealth and family relationships.

Business Succession Planning

For business owners, estate planning and succession planning are often inseparable.

A closely held or family business may represent one of a family’s most valuable assets, but transferring that business successfully involves questions that go far beyond ownership.

Who will lead the company when the current owner steps away? Will ownership and management remain together? Are members of the next generation prepared to assume leadership? Should children who work in the business be treated differently from those who do not? What happens if no family member wants to operate the company? Should the business eventually be sold?

Leti helps business owners address these questions before a transition becomes urgent.

Her work may include coordinating trusts and estate planning documents with operating agreements, partnership agreements, shareholder agreements, buy-sell arrangements, ownership structures, and other business governance documents.

Succession planning may also involve determining when ownership should transfer, how future leaders will be prepared, how estate and gift tax considerations should be addressed, and how business and nonbusiness assets should be balanced among family members.

The goal is not simply to transfer a business interest. It is to create a thoughtful framework for the future of the business, the family, and the wealth the business has created.

Family Governance and Multigenerational Wealth

As family wealth becomes more complex, legal planning increasingly intersects with family decision-making.

Leti advises families on planning structures intended to preserve wealth while also preparing future generations for the responsibilities that may accompany ownership, inheritance, trusteeship, or leadership.

Family governance can be particularly important when multiple generations share interests in businesses, real estate, trusts, investments, charitable entities, or other significant family assets.

Leti helps families consider questions such as:

What does the family want its wealth to accomplish?

What responsibilities should accompany inherited wealth?

Who should participate in important decisions?

How should disagreements be addressed?

What does the next generation need to understand before assuming greater responsibility?

How should younger family members be prepared for ownership, trusteeship, or leadership?

These questions can be just as important as the legal documents themselves.

Thoughtful family governance can help establish expectations, decision-making processes, roles, responsibilities, and mechanisms for addressing disagreements before they become disputes.

Leti’s work in this area reflects a broader view of estate planning. Preserving wealth matters, but preparing the people who will ultimately manage that wealth can matter just as much.

Trust Administration

The death of a family member can create significant legal and administrative responsibilities for a successor trustee.

A trustee may be required to interpret trust provisions, identify and value assets, provide notices to beneficiaries, coordinate with financial institutions and professional advisors, address debts and expenses, manage tax-related matters, prepare accountings, administer ongoing trusts, and ultimately distribute assets.

Leti represents trustees in California trust administrations and helps fiduciaries understand and carry out their responsibilities.

She also advises beneficiaries regarding their rights and interests during the administration process.

Trust administration can become particularly complex when an estate includes significant real estate, closely held businesses, difficult-to-value assets, multiple beneficiaries, ongoing trusts, family conflict, or questions regarding the trustee’s duties or discretion.

Leti brings her broader estate planning, family governance, and business succession experience to these matters, helping clients address both the legal requirements and the family considerations that often accompany a trust administration.

Probate and Estate Administration

When assets are subject to California probate, Leti assists executors, administrators, personal representatives, beneficiaries, and families through the court-supervised estate administration process.

Probate may involve petitioning the court for appointment of a personal representative, identifying and valuing estate assets, providing required notices, addressing creditor claims, managing or selling property, handling administrative and tax matters, preparing accountings, and obtaining authority to distribute assets.

Probate can become more complex when an estate includes significant real estate, business interests, disputed ownership, difficult-to-value assets, or property that must be coordinated with trusts or other nonprobate transfers.

Leti works with clients to manage these issues carefully and efficiently while helping families understand the responsibilities and decisions involved in the administration process.

Charitable Planning

For some families, legacy extends beyond what ultimately passes to children and grandchildren.

It may also include support for charitable organizations, educational institutions, community organizations, foundations, religious organizations, or other causes that have been meaningful to the family.

Leti helps clients integrate charitable giving into their broader estate and wealth-transfer planning.

Depending on the client’s objectives, charitable planning may involve lifetime gifts, testamentary gifts, charitable trusts, donor-advised strategies, private foundations, or other planning structures.

The legal structure and tax treatment matter, but those tools should ultimately support the family’s broader purpose for giving.

Planning for Incapacity

Estate planning is not limited to what happens after death.

A thoughtful plan should also address who will make financial, legal, business, and health care decisions if a client becomes unable to act independently.

Powers of attorney, advance health care directives, revocable trusts, trustee succession provisions, and business governance documents can each play an important role in incapacity planning.

For clients with significant businesses, investments, real estate portfolios, or complex financial affairs, incapacity planning may require particular attention to the authority that agents and trustees will need to manage those interests effectively.

Leti helps clients consider both who should make those decisions and what authority those individuals may need.

Planning for Changing Families and Circumstances

A strong estate plan should provide clear direction where clarity is important while preserving appropriate flexibility where circumstances may change.

Children grow older. Businesses evolve. Real estate portfolios change. Families welcome new members. Relationships change. Assets are acquired and sold. Tax laws and estate planning rules change. The individuals originally selected to serve as trustees, executors, agents, or other fiduciaries may eventually become unavailable or may no longer be the best choices.

Leti helps clients think through both present circumstances and reasonably foreseeable changes.

The goal is not to predict every possible future event. It is to create an estate plan capable of functioning effectively as the client’s life, family, assets, and business interests evolve.

Reviewing and Updating Existing Estate Plans

An estate plan that was appropriate when it was signed may not remain appropriate indefinitely.

Clients may benefit from reviewing their estate plans after major life events or significant financial changes, including marriage, divorce, births, deaths, changes in wealth, acquisition or sale of real estate, formation or sale of a business, changes in family relationships, relocation, or changes in tax and estate planning law.

A review may also identify outdated trustees, executors, agents, beneficiary provisions, ownership structures, or assets that were never properly coordinated with the plan.

Leti reviews existing estate plans to determine whether the documents, ownership structure, beneficiary designations, and broader strategy continue to reflect the client’s current circumstances and objectives.

A Collaborative Approach to Estate Planning

Sophisticated estate planning rarely occurs in isolation.

Complex plans may require coordination among estate planning attorneys, certified public accountants, financial advisors, investment professionals, insurance professionals, valuation professionals, business advisors, and other members of a client’s advisory team.

Leti values this collaborative approach.

Coordinating the legal plan with the client’s broader financial, tax, business, and investment planning can help identify gaps, reduce inconsistencies, and create a more cohesive strategy.

Her work is designed around each client’s particular family, assets, concerns, and objectives rather than a standardized planning model.

Education and Professional Background

Leticia Martinez brings a strong academic and professional foundation to her estate planning practice.

Her legal education and professional experience have shaped a practice focused on sophisticated estate planning, trusts and estates, business succession, family governance, and multigenerational wealth preservation.

Throughout her career, Leti has developed substantial experience advising individuals and families whose planning involves significant wealth, closely held businesses, real estate, trusts, and complex family considerations.

Her work emphasizes not only technical legal planning, but also communication, preparation, and long-term decision-making within families.

Professional Recognition and Awards

Leti’s work in estate planning, trusts and estates, and wealth planning has received recognition from respected legal and business publications.

The Daily Journal selected Leticia Martinez for its Top Estate & Wealth Management Lawyers 2026 special report, recognizing 45 California attorneys in the field.

The Pacific Coast Business Times has also recognized Leti among leading professionals in the Central Coast business community, including recognition through its Top Women in Business and 40 Under 40 programs.

In addition to Leti’s individual professional recognition, Ambrecht & Martinez, LLP has been recognized by Best Lawyers as a Best Law Firm for both 2026 and 2027.

These distinctions reflect Leti’s leadership as Managing Partner of Ambrecht & Martinez and the firm’s broader commitment to sophisticated estate planning, trusts and estates, business succession, and multigenerational wealth planning.

Managing Partner of Ambrecht & Martinez, LLP

As Managing Partner and a founding partner of Ambrecht & Martinez, Leti plays a central role in the firm’s legal practice, client service, and long-term direction.

Her leadership reflects the same principles that shape her work with clients: careful planning, clear communication, collaboration, and a long-term perspective.

Under her leadership, Ambrecht & Martinez continues to focus on sophisticated estate planning, trust and estate administration, business succession, family governance, charitable planning, and multigenerational wealth preservation for individuals and families throughout California.

Santa Barbara Estate Planning Attorney Serving California

Leti is based in Santa Barbara and advises clients in Santa Barbara County and throughout California.

Her practice focuses on estate planning, trusts and estates, trust administration, probate and estate administration, estate and gift tax planning, business succession, family governance, charitable planning, asset protection, real estate planning, and multigenerational wealth preservation.

Her clients frequently include high-net-worth families, owners of closely held and family businesses, real estate owners and investors, trustees, fiduciaries, beneficiaries, executives, professionals, and families preparing to transfer significant wealth to future generations.

Why Clients Work With Leticia Martinez

Families with significant assets often need more than legal documents.

They need counsel capable of understanding how estate planning, taxation, real estate, business ownership, family relationships, fiduciary responsibilities, and long-term wealth transfer interact.

Leti brings those considerations together in a coordinated planning process.

Her approach is thoughtful, practical, and highly personal. She works with clients to understand not only what they own, but also what they are trying to accomplish for their families.

That may mean preserving flexibility, reducing potential conflict, planning for incapacity, preparing a business for transition, protecting real estate, creating appropriate structures for children and grandchildren, or helping the next generation prepare for the responsibilities that may accompany inherited wealth.

For Leti, sophisticated estate planning is not simply about transferring assets from one generation to the next.

It is about creating clarity, preparing for transitions, coordinating complex assets, preserving what a family has built, and developing a thoughtful framework for the people who will ultimately carry that legacy forward.