Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California
if my father was a widower and remarries, is the step mother untitled to the house? Even though there is a will saying that if mother and father dies that the house goes to the children? What can be done about this to where the children still have ownership?
4 Answers from Attorneys
Unless Dad wrote a new will, everything goes to Stepmom, and you get bupkis.
Whose will? How is title held? Is there a trust? Did you mother have a will? Was it probated?
Two-party wills are not common and most estate planners discourage such joint or mutual wills; they can be revoked by either maker, and present special problems in probate. Your questions seem to imply a two-party will or coordinated wills.
Is your question hypothetical, or has your mother died and your father remarried already? If the former, the family should get their act together and prepare a plan, probably involving a trust or trusts rather than wills, or, heaven forbid, a joint will. If these events have already taken place, the answer will lie in the results of the probate of your father's will, which you should investigate with the assistance of an attorney who specializes in probate matters, preferably one practicing in the county where the house is.
Bupkis? Wasn't he a linebacker for the Chicago Bears?
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