Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

Re: Remove myself from mother's will for cash distribution

It's very kind of you to desire to disclaim your inheritance, and there would several way to accomplish your goal.

Perhaps the easiest method would be to change your mother's will or revocable living trust to effect your desires. It's also possible that your mother's will or RLT has already been drafted to effect your desire. A risk here is that you mother would take the opportunity to include some other person or charity instead of your sisters as your replacement.

Another method might require that you receive the gift and then distribute it in pieces. On receipt of the bequest, the money received would be taxable in your mother's estate not yours. This would be the same for your sisters as well, so there is no adverse tax consequence from this transaction.

Then you could disperse the entire amount to your sisters. As you may already know, this would be a taxable transaction for you but would only be counted against your lifetime gift exclusion, assuming that you haven't used yours already.

Perhaps better, you could receive the gift, and then use your annual gift exclusions to make annual gifts to your sisters over a number of years. This year you can gift $12,000 per person. The nice thing about this is that you can use it as many times as you have people whom you trust. So for instance, if you have two sister each of whom has a long-term relationship with a partner, you could gift $24,000 to each couple per year. If you yourself are married, you could double the amount of gifting to $48,000 per year, all without triggering any tax consequence. If there are nieces or nephews, you could add them too, each with an increase in the amount of non-taxable gifting.