Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: home ownership

There is a theory called "purchase money resulting trust" that sometimes works with real estate; I don't know without research id it works with personal property such as a mobile home, but maybe. The theory is that when someone puts up the purchase money but legal title ends up in someone else's name, that someone else can be presumed at law to hold legal title as an involuntary trustee of an implied trust, of which the person who put up the money is the beneficiary. The resulting trust must be proven by clear and convincing evidence at trial. This is NOT something you can do by filling out a form. The presumption of a trust can be overcome by showing that the person with legal title was given a gift, and when that person is a child of the buyer, it may be difficult to convince the judge that a gift wasn't intended and that a resulting trust should be found. You might need witnesses who would testify to corroborate that you did this for (faulty) estate-planning reasons and not with the intent to make a present gift. The whole process will be expensive and time-consuming, and of questionable value over a mobile home. It sometimes works to the real buyer's advantage where million-dollar parcels of real estate are in dispute.