Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Changing a deed

Unless the cousin will voluntarily agree to have the deed changed, your grandmother would have to do a "partition" action, meaning to ask the court to force a sale of the property and split the proceeds, or to have one party keep the house and pay the other's share of the equity.

Re: Changing a deed

Your grandmother needs to get the property out of joint tenancy. A joint tenancy can be severed by a joint tenant by executing and recording an instrument declaring intent to sever, but may not do so contrary to a valid contractual agreement between the joint tenants restricting the right of the joint tenants to sever. See Civil Code section 683.2.

A real estate attorney should be able to do this quite inexpensively, but the attorney should first review the documents by which the joint tenancy was originally created.

Re: Changing a deed

The generic answer to your generic question would be deeding her interest to herself and XXXX, by means of a grant deed to divest her joint tenancy to a tenancy in common. There may be property tax or income tax consequences that you should seek counsel for.

Re: Changing a deed

She won't be able to remove the cousin from the deed without the cousin's consent, if that's what you're asking. However, your grandmother can preserve her half by deeding her part to herself as a tenant in common, and recording the deed. Her half can then be given by will, trust, etc.