Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Transferring Property

All of your concerns and goals can be addressed by a competent estate planning attorney. There are plenty of ways to approach the issues you've outlined, but giving the overall picture to an estate planning attorney is the best place to start.

Re: Transferring Property

It does not sound as though you currently own the house, but that the house has been placed in trust so that upon a certain event (ostensibly your parents' death)you will then get the house. If your parents were to tkae the property out of the trust and deed the house to you outright, and it is property in California, there is an exemption from reassessment between parents and child which you can file for at the time of recordation of the grant deed, so the property taxes would not increase. There are income tax ramifications which result from getting the property now as opposed to getting it upon the death of your parents. As you do not own it right now, there is no way to leave it to your children, and your parents may want to continue to control the property at this time. Once you do own it you can worry about how to leave it to your kids, like placing it in a trust, etc.

Re: Transferring Property

A properly-drafted trust instrument, created by your parents, could now be drafted which woukd accomplish the two-generation transfer, assuming that the house is not already in an irrevocable trust. Most living trusts are revocable. Please bear in mind that a trust (or revision to the existing trust) to handle successive transfers is not a fill-in-the-blanks proposition. It will have to be (at least in part) custom drafted, one clause at a time, by an attorney who really knows what he/she is doing.