Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Mortgage

Between husband and wife, it usually makes no difference who makes the payments, because your current earnings and his current earnings are both 100% community property and the law makes no distinction between which spouse's paycheck created the income. There's no hers and his; it's "theirs." So, legally speaking, you are both making the payments.

Next, if the house is solely in your name, keep in mind that the credit reporting agencies are looking at you as a homeowner, i.e., a person with property, and I assume also a good record of making the mortgage payments (all they know is that the payments are coming in on time and the checks aren't bouncing; the credit bureaus don't know it's your husband's paycheck).

If you were to somehow transfer the loan to his name, you would also have to quitclaim the house to him - remember, the bank won't lend except to the owner! Suddenly, you are a person who doesn't own property, and you are a person who isn't showing up as making big mortgage payments on time. All that will have a serious negative effect on your credit rating, IMHO, although I don't know precisely how the Fair, Isaac formula works.

Unless you have an unusual need to come up with a personal balance sheet that shows neither the house nor the loan obligation, I strongly recommend that you stand pat.

By the way, under the Family Code and court decisions about the property of married couples, each time community funds are used to make a mortgage payment, the community acquires a tiny additional sliver of interest in the house. So, although it was presumably 100% yours when your husband quitclaimed to you, with three or four payments having been made since, your marital community now probably owns about 1/4% and your separate interest is down to about 99 and 3/4%.