Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

By following the rules and procedures required under trust and tax law. Sounds like you need to consult with experienced counsel in your area to avoid making serious and costly mistakes.

The first thing you have to do is make sure you are entitled to distribute the contents of the trust. That will require an interpretation of the trust instrument itself to make sure you are the only beneficiaries and that the trust calls for the assets to be distributed once your parents die. You might want to spend a few hundred dollars on an attorney to review it, as Mr. Nelson suggests. Once you are sure you are entitled to the distribution, however, it is very simple. The trustee(s) issue a standard deed to you and your sister as tenants in common. You then record the deed at the county recorder's office. If your parents were the trustees, and they deeded the house into the trust, you will also have to record an affidavit of death of trustee with a certified copy of the death certificate. Unless you intend to keep the house for a long time, however, or the trust requires being closed by its own terms once your parents die, there really is not much advantage to changing the title until you need to in order to sell it or borrow against it. In either case the title company that handles the loan or sale should be able to handle all the documentation you need, rather than doing it yourself.