Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California
After short sale closing, my husband and I transferred grant deed title to our family trust 10 days after. The approved short sale letter by boa requires no transfers within 90 days from closing date. What will happen and what should we do now? We are the buyer.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Sounds like a technical violation of your agreement, but I'd be a bit surprised if the bank had any objections. The no transfers within 90 days rule is to prevent your profiteering from selling to an undisclosed third-party buyer that you had waiting in the wings. For many purposes, a transfer to a family trust is not a true transfer; among other things, such trusts are usually revocable by the trustors and there is a California case that held a transfer to such a trust could not be fraudulent under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act because it wasn't a true transfer.
I agree with Mr. Whipple IF your trust is a standard inter-vivos revocable trust. If it is an irrevocable trust, you may have a problem, but transfers to revocable trusts are not regarded as transfers by lenders.