Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

There is no particular time requirement to change record title to reflect death and inheritance, and the appropriate time-frame varies with circumstances, such as whether the property was held in a trust, whether there is a complicated probate process, whether the heir(s) want to sell promptly, and so on. So the "need to" aspect is determined by real-life situations, not dictated by the law. As to life estates, the duration of a life estate is usually governed by the life of the person benefitting from the life estate (the "life tenant") and expires when he or she dies, but that isn't the only possibility; occasionally the duration of the life estate is determined by the life of someone else, i.e., X gets the property back from Y when Z passes away.......but as to your question, change of title does not affect the rights of someone with a life estate; the person holding title is called the "remainderman" but the rights of a life tenant are not affected by conveyance of title from remainderman A to remainderman B.

The life tenant still has a right to occupy the property. The new people on title would only have whatever interest the remainderman transferred to them. At the end of the life tenant's life, the property would revert to the new owner, rather than the remaindermen.