Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Joint Tenancy

The way you have your estate planned would be simple to change if something happened to one of you. The bigger question is, shat would happen if something happened to both of you? The answer is Probate.

You should seriously consider havin a living trust prepared that will protect your assets and save a lot of time and money if something happens to both of you.

Re: Joint Tenancy

Howdy:

When one joint tenant dies, an affidavit of death of joint tenant is recorded with the county recorder. This clears the chain of title. To add someone else to the title, a new deed needs to be executed and recorded. An escrow company can do this for you, or you can have a lawyer draw up the deed.

rkr

Re: Joint Tenancy

I'm surprised to see advice coming from Texas when this is clearly a question based on California law.

Joint tenancy is a rather unusual, but not unheard of, way for a married couple to hold property. More frequently, property is held as community property. Further, after a recent change in the law, community property can be held with the right of survival, meaning that full ownership passes to the survivor upon the death of one of the married couple.

To answer the question, when a co-owner dies under any "right of survival" form or ownership, the survivor gets 100% ownership automatically. Any subsequent property disposition is then entirely up to the whim of the survivor, and the deceased former co-owner does not have any capacity to devise his/her share by will. In other words. what you call "the remaining one" can do pretty much anything he or she wishes.

If as a couple you want to have some joint influence over what happens after one or the other of you dies, your best bet is to see an estate=planning attorney and have a trust set up.

The second best alternative is to hold the property as community property, with well-written wills in place.

In any event, spending a few hundred bucks on proper estate planning will save your heirs much much more in taxes, litigation and general grief.