Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Get a good trust and estates lawyer to help you file the deed and any applicable exemption claim forms to avoid reassessment. You may be eligable for parent child exclusion, but need to file claim forms. You do need to transfer the proeprty. As a matter on information, you should have advised the assessor at date of death. There may be consequences for failure to do so. It's time to do this right.

You shouldn't need a lawyer to do this, but Mr. Christian is right that you are legally obligated to deed it out of the trust if the trust provides that the property is to be transferred to you. There are exemptions to the property tax reassessment if you are the child or grand child of the deceased, and a few others. Your county assessor and/or county recorder's office can help you with the forms for claiming the exemption. You just record them along with the deed from the trust to you and if properly completed and if you actually qualify of course, the property tax will not be reassessed.

Although you did not ask about this, you also need to get a current market valuation for the property and keep a record of it. Since the property passed to you through the trust on death of the previous owner, the capital gains tax calculation re-sets to the date of death as if you had bought it for the full value on that date. So any capital gains will only be calculated on any increased value after that date, not on the original value when the deceased bought it. That means you will not pay any capital gains on the increased value until it increases $250,000.00 if you are single and $500,000.00 if you are married. But you need to know the value now (or the date of death if the value has changed since then) in order to claim that exemption whenever you sell the property. A realtor's estimate of value will probably due. A full appraisal is, of course, ideal.

I agree with Mr. McCormick's analysis. Note that the forms and exemption-claim procedures vary from county to county, so be sure to deal only with the county where the property is. If as it appears, the inherited property is in Los Angeles County, I've noticed that the County Assessor has a good description of their rules and procedures on their Web site.