Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Refinancing in someone else name

Either the house is yours as a result of a gift, or it remains your mother's because the deed is void, or, a third possibility, you are in some kind of co-ownership with your mother. At the moment, that's not necessary to sort out.

In any of the three possibilities mentioned above, your interest in the house, if any, should be your separate property and not community property.

There may be facts you haven't mentioned that would change this preliminary diagnosis, but if I were you, I would start out with the position that there is no community-property interest in the house.

When you say 'part of the divorce agreement,' this doesn't tell me much. Is she claiming this house as community property that needs to be divided, or just acknowledging it as your separate property? A marital settlement agreement ordinarily lists and identifies the divorcing spouses' separate property as well as the community property, just to show (in case of a dispute later on) that the possibility of a community-property interest in that asset was considered and dismissed by agreement of the spouses.

If you aren't now represented by a family-law attorney in the dissolution proceeding, maybe you should retain one.