Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

No, it is not legally yours. Signing and delivering the quitclaim deed made the property your husband's sole property, even if the public record didn't reflect it. What I'm not understanding is why in the world you paid the taxes rather than let it get auctioned off. If you quitclaimed it you no longer owned it, even if the quitclaim was never recorded in the public records. You should have just let it go. Now you remain the record owner of the property which gives you apparent liability for it. If someone gets injured on it, for example, they'll look to you and you'll have to prove you quitclaimed it away. Not a good position to be in. So now you need to clean this up to avoid being responsible for the property. My suggestion is that you contact the buyer and quitclaim directly to them and make sure it gets properly recorded.