Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Property titles and probate

To start, when two persons co-own real property as joint tenants, and one of them dies, the property becomes the sole property of the survivor "automatically and instantly," without need for probate, trustees, or the like.

Then, the property can be disposed of by said survivor as he or she sees fit, including selling it while living, or by trust or will at his or her own death.

Good long-term planning for the couple would seem to suggest reducing the risk of someone getting "accidentally" disinherited against the current wishes of one of the spouses. There are also tax reasons for longer-term succession planning. I would recommend seeing a specialist in estate planning sooner rather than later.

I'm not such a specialist, but my hunch is that the specialist would suggest using one or more living trusts. I think placing the property into a single trust would break the joint tenancy, but this is not necessarily bad, because the terms of the trust can preserve and extend the purposes, intent and result for which the current joint tenancy was originally set up.

By the way, property held in a properly-drawn and funded trust is not subject to probate.