Serving Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Ventura Counties with Estate Planning, Family Law, Wills & Trusts, Estate & Trust Administration, Divorce, Child Custody, and Probate
Focused on Getting Results
When you are facing a complicated or disputed legal matter, you need guidance and support from experienced attorneys who not only understand the law, but also understand the many human dynamics, need for compassion, court procedures and processes, and dispute resolution skills to find a solution.
At Penner & Purves, our legal team provides cost-effective, comprehensive representation across a range of legal matters, specializing in Estate Planning, Trust Administration, Family Law, Divorce, Child Custody, Probate, Wills and Trusts, and Civil Litigation. We tailor our legal representation to each client's specific needs while remaining conscious of legal costs. With more than 46 years of experience, we have the necessary skills and resources to help you achieve your legal goals.
Underlying our entire law practice is the principle that there are times to be aggressive and to fight, but there are also times to approach an escalating legal dispute with the resolve to prioritize, preserve, and value relationships. This means that many legal matters need to be handled in a way that keeps people out of the courts and enables them to preserve their relationships. Other legal matters need to be taken to trial as soon as possible.
Personal Client Service
We care about our clients and take steps to ensure personal client service to help reduce the emotional stress associated with the legal system. We devote substantial time, energy and resources to our clients in order to better understand their short and long-term goals. Our in-depth client service includes detailing your available options as well as possible consequences so you can make informed decisions throughout the course of your legal matter or case.
At Penner & Purves, there is always a friendly voice on other side of the phone. We provide open and direct client communication via in-person, phone, and virtual consultations. If you have an emergency, we will respond within 24 hours.
Get in touch with us to set up a FREE consultation by calling (805) 965-0085, or use the contact form at the bottom of this page to inquire whether our services are right for you.
CORE VALUES
Our Law Office’s Core Values can be listed and summarized as follows:
Diligence ~ high work ethic that practices tireless commitment to serving clients with energy
Clarity ~ care and attention to precision in words and details; clear and correct English grammar
Empathy ~ practicing truly and sincerely feeling for clients’ griefs, fears, worries, and loves
Family ~ commitment to serving families as foundational to community and our common good
Virtue ~ cultivation of moral character matters rather than mere rule following or utilitarian calculus
Prudence ~ discerning the difference between the time to compromise and the time to fight
Reason ~ devotion to reason ― not will, money, or power ― as the grounds for law & legal outcomes
the Good ~ pursuit of the good of others as the end and purpose of our work in serving clients and the law
As a part of cultivating the above values, in an increasingly polarized and politicized age, we also pride ourselves on being able to cultivate friendships and to work across partisan divides. While the members of our law office have held widely divergent political views over the years, and while they still do, we believe that anyone who genuinely cares about the good of others should be able to listen and have civil and productive discourse with those of opposing viewpoints.
If Justices Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be the best of friends, going to the opera together during their off-time, then any good lawyer should be able to maintain friendships with clients and professionals on both the left and the right. Indeed, this is an essential skill for any lawyer so that the lawyer can maintain amicable relations with judges of any political persuasion. It is by our practicing the ability to maintain amiability with those who hold to all opposing viewpoints that we believe long-run success in our local community, with clients from all walks of life and from all political persuasions, is possible.
Contact
Phone: (805) 965-0085
Fax: (805) 963-3156
sep@pennerandpurves.com
jpurves@pennerandpurves.com
➤ LOCATION
1215 De La Vina Street, Suite K
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
Areas of Practice
ESTATE PLANNING
Do you know beyond a shadow of a doubt what would happen legally and financially to you, your loved ones, your money, and everything you care about if something unexpected happened to you? Are you managing your finances and holding your assets in such a way as to protect yourself and your family from adverse tax consequences? We are pleased to announce that we now offer estate planning with a Personal Family Lawyer®, providing clients with an array of options (including the Kids Protection Plan™ for those with children) specifically tailored and designed to preserve and build each kind of wealth, both tangible and intangible. It is our privilege to offer our clients relational estate planning counseling, rather than copy-and-paste one-off transactional documents that would be unlikely to work for your family when the time comes that they are needed.
TrustS: Administration & Litigation
Trust administration in accordance with California law is a highly specialized field involving numerous fiduciary duties, requirements, and responsibilities. If you are a Trustee, not only should you be working with comprehensive checklists and have a firm grasp on your responsibilities, but you also fill a truly important position of trust for someone who believed in you. Practiced with care, you have the capacity to cultivate a life-giving and life-affirming relationship with the Trust’s beneficiaries as a way of honoring the person who appointed you. Under the terms of most trusts, a Trustee is entitled to retain the services of legal counsel. Because we have extensive experience representing trustees and assisting them in navigating the requirements of California law, we design our trust administration process both in order to minimize a Trust’s attorneys fees and to maximize the Trustee’s quality of service as a fiduciary.
divorce, lEGAL SEPARATION, spousal support
Do you understand all the financial, relational, and health consequences of a divorce? Have you seen what happens to couples in divorce proceedings where it is the goal of the divorce attorney to sue the other spouse for all that they are worth? If these are issues you care about, if you want to maintain a position of reasonableness, and if you value the preservation of relationships and friendships, then know that our 45+ years of experience has been devoted to this approach and philosophy. No couple’s finances should be entirely eaten away by attorneys fees due to divorce. No divorce should be fought as a scorched-earth campaign against another person. If divorce has to come, it can be done with kindness, reasonableness, generosity, integrity, and economy. If you are faced with the prospect of divorce, we will help you do the right thing in any way that we can.
child custody & support
If we represent and assist you as a parent to resolve legal proceedings affecting your children, we will make the following three commitments: (1) to place the best interests, security, care, and support of your children as the top priority above all else; (2) to de-escalate conflict, and to resolve potential disputes as swiftly and amicably as possible in order to preserve the civility that parents need to work together for the good of their children; and (3) to aggressively obtain the support and resources needed should the necessity arise, while also maintaining a realistic view towards the finances of any single household that must now bear the burden of supporting two households. Too many children are subjected to stressful and acrimonious court proceedings. These issues should be resolved without causing additional harm or damage.
PROBATE
The loss of a close family member or friend is a difficult time, and the settling of an estate in probate can be overwhelming. Not only that, but the California probate process takes far too long (ranging from 12 to 18 months). If you work with us and follow our system, we will assist you in completing the probate process as quickly as the law and the courts will allow, approximately 9-10 months. After 45+ years of experience in assisting Executors and Administrators administer probate estates, we have found that a majority of contested probates results directly from poor communication between Executors, their attorneys, and Heirs. Thus, we maximize the probability of conducting a conflict-free probate process by maintaining a policy of transparency and open communication with all heirs to a probate estate. A well conducted probate then becomes a matter of good stewardship and attention to detail, skills we employ with great care.
ELDER ABUSE LITIGATION
Every family has serious and legitimate concerns about the health, protection, rights, and privileges of elderly family members. Declining health or diminished capacity can, if not carefully planned for, result in a loss of freedom and personal autonomy. As a result, elders are among the most vulnerable members of our community and are particularly susceptible to abuse. If you are concerned that an elderly person is being harmed or mistreated, do not hesitate to contact us for review of the situation. There are various legal remedies that you can pursue to protect your elderly grandparents, parents, siblings, or friends. There are legal principles, including legal capacity, undue influence, fraud, conflict of interest, and the like which California Courts will consider in order to protect those who are vulnerable. However, at the same time, if you can avoid the costs of going to court, then that will often be for the benefit of the person you are attempting to protect.
“We will never forget all of the dedication and hard work Stephen E. Penner put in our case. Thank you.”
How Can We Help You?
Use the form below to contact us regarding your legal inquiry. Please be as detailed as possible. To help us best service your inquiry, we recommend that you first describe the issue you’re having, before telling us what you want to achieve. You may also email or call us to make an appointment for a FREE phone evaluation.