Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

It is the duty of the life tenant to pay property taxes. �The owner of a life estate must keep the buildings and fences in repair from ordinary waste, and must pay the taxes and other annual charges, and a just proportion of the extraordinary assessments benefiting the whole inheritance.� (Civ. Code, � 840.)

If the remainderman pays taxes, he has a right of subrogation against the life tenant. �Every person, having an interest in property subject to a lien, has a right to redeem it from the lien, at any time after the claim is due, and before his right of redemption is foreclosed, and, by such redemption, becomes subrogated to all the benefits of the lien, as against all owners of other interests in the property, except in so far as he was bound to make such redemption for their benefit.� (Civ. Code, � 2903.)

�Here, the obligation to pay the taxes was upon Mrs. Turpin as life tenant. (Civ. Code, 840), and, as we have seen, Riley paid them in order to prevent final forfeiture of the property. It is established that, as a contingent remainderman, his interest in the property was such as to entitle him to make such payment without being considered a mere volunteer.� (Riley v. Turpin (1956) 47 Cal.2d 152, 156.)

The right of subrogation is a lawsuit to recover the property taxes paid, not an eviction.