Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Step-mother selling my deceased fathers house

You have to check the title to the house. If it is a joint tenancy with right of survivorship or in her name, then she owns the house. If it is held in the trust, you can and should demand a copy of the trust document so you can see what the terms of the trust are and how it treats you.

Re: Step-mother selling my deceased fathers house

Email me directly and I'll see if I can help a little.

-Ben

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Re: Step-mother selling my deceased fathers house

If your father died with a trust in place rather than, or even in addition to, a will, the terms of the trust probably govern who can sell the house, who gets to keep the money from the sale, and who is entitled to be notified about any of this.

Since apparently neither your father nor your stepmother saw fit to inform you of the trust's terms, or to give you a copy, you should perhaps be prepared to find out that he didn't leave much, if anything, to you.

On the other hand, don't just assume the worst! Maybe someone is trying to defraud you.

You need to find out the terms of the trust, in particular who was made the successor trustee upon your father's death (I assume he was his own trustee while alive; that's usual), and what instructions the trust contains with respect to inheritance of the house and other trust assets.

There are several things you can do yourself to gather information and begin to sniff out the situation:

(1) Go to the County Recorder's office and look at the recent records on file for your father's house. You'll probably find a deed transferring ownership from him personally, to himself as trustee of his trust. Get a copy of any such deed. Look at the upper left corner (and other places) to see if you can figure out what lawyer or law firm had it recorded, or prepared it.

(2) Do you know who your father used as a lawyer for other things? Can you find out?

(3) Ask the real estate agent or broker who has the listing what they have seen establishing the step-mother's right to list and sell the house. No doubt they have been provided with a copy of your father's trust. Upon your identifying yourself as a possible heir.

The purpose of (1), (2) and (3) is to obtain, somehow, somewhere, a copy of the trust.

Another more direct way is simply to ask your step-mother for a copy. If she is operating on proper authority, I see no reason why she would refuse to show you her authority to sell the house by giving you a copy of the trust. If she refuses, and you have no luck with other methods, I'd be suspicious and retain a lawyer at once.

Finally, I might add that there may be other ways to get copies of trust documents when you are a close relative; there are some disclosure provisions in the Probate Code that require trustees to contact parties named in a trust as beneficiaries, for example; I don't practice in the area of wills, trusts and estates and cannot advise you more particularly.