Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Can an attorney put a Trust Deed lien on property?

A trust deed lien? No, not unless you have consented to the deed of trust, because trust deeds are consensual. I suspect you are mis-describing or misunderstanding what's going on. There is a law in California that allows a party in a dissolution of marriage case to pledge her or his interest in community real estate to secure the party's obligations to his/her lawyer, and this is an unusual exception to the general rule that liens on real property require certain formalities such as consent of the owners.

If the case in question is a dissolution of marriage, and both spouses have pledged the same community property, the situation you describe is perhaps possible.

If it is not a divorce situation, and there is no consent, I would say an answer to this question required further factual elaboration because on its fact it seems impossible and there is a strong likelihood that there is a mstake in use of terminology or someone has executed instruments that they don't remember.

Placing liens on more than one property is not only permissible, but happens frequently; this doesn't authorize over-collecting, however. If you owe someone $100,000, and you own three houses each worth $1 million, the creditor can subject each of them to a lien for $100,000, but can only obtain one satisfaction.

This still doesn;t explain how any creditor can get a "deed of trust" by an involuntary process. The lien can be a trust deed lien if you executed a deed of trust, but otherwise a lien would have to be a judgment lien or some other involuntary sort of thing.

More explanation, please. Then LawGuru attorneys can perhaps figure out what's happening and give you useful advice.