Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: inheritance laws

The inherited home is your husband's separate property.

Commingling is a question of fact, not the passage of time. Property such as money, stocks and bonds, and other financial assets are considered commingled when it is no longer clear where the property came from - her separate property, his separate property, or community earnings. Other non-financial assets can be, become, or be traceable to commingled sources as well, but commingling is conceptually near impossible with real property because there is a record of title (and other reasons such as ready identifiability).

What can happen with separate real property, however, is that the community can sometimes get a tiny fractional interest, which then can grow and grow, through use of community funds, or the other spouse's separate-property funds, for things like mortgage payments and improvements. Such an interest is called a "pro tanto" community-property interest. This is legal Latin for "whatever it's worth" or "so much as is deserved" or something like that.

There are theories in the world of community-property law under which a pro tanto community interest could arise from a spouse's management of the other's separate-property income real estate. Such an interest would be tiny at first, percentage-wise, but could grow. By the couple's 60th anniversary, the pro tanto interest could be, with inflation, maybe 99%, which would mean husband's bottom-line interest is down to 50.5% and wife's interest, through the community, is up to 49.5%. It can never become 50-50 because husband's original inherited interest is always there (unless he makes a gift of it to the wife or the community, but that's another story).

Re: inheritance laws

If your husband inherits a piece of property it is generally considered his separate property. Typically commingling is associated with placing separate property funds into a community property account. At that point, the separate property funds likely become community property. You won't simply convert the property from separate to community merely by owning it for a certain number of years.

However, managing it comes with several issues that depend on exactly what you mean by 'manage' the property. If you improve it with community property funds then typcially the community will gain an interest arising from the property, either in the property itself OR in the form of reimbursement.

Best of Luck!

Re: inheritance laws

It is separate. But, to the extent that community resources are used to maintain the property, pay taxes, etc. the community acquires an interest in the absence of an agreement between the spouses to the contrary.