Legal Question in Wills and Trusts in California

For multiple tax reasons and creditor issues, it is not a good idea to add your name to the title. If your mother and her husband owned the house as joint tenants, then all that is needed to remove his name is to record an affidavit of death of joint tenant. Then your mother should talk to an attorney about setting up an estate plan.

If you are your mother's only heir, the property will pass to you, you will need to probate it to transfer title, it will take a stepped up basis, is not subject to reassessment if you file for an exemption for parent to child transfer, and there is a $5,000,000 tax exclusion. But your mother should do some estate planning to avoid costs in the future and troubles.

I would agree with the advice above. Your mother may want to visit with an estate planning attorney to discuss possible options that can reduce problems with transfers and probate.

If her deceased husband is still on title, clearly his estate has not been properly wrapped up. That is the first step before anything else can be planned or done. As was mentioned earlier, if she and he held title as joint tenants, it could be as simple as recording an affidavit of death of joint tenant. Any title company can help you out with that. Once title is solely in your mother's name, you and she need to figure out the most advantageous way to pass it to you when she dies. Putting you on title now in 99.9% of situations would incur taxes and exposure to other legal issues, and provide little or no benefit that cannot be gained other ways. In almost all cases, a simple inter vivos trust will be the best answer. A good attorney should be able to advise her and prepare the necessary documents very inexpensively.

I disagree with the previous responses, because they ignore the fact that you stated that your mother recently passed away. There is no way for you to transfer title without going through probate, although I do agree with Mr. Shers that you may qualify for exemptions from the tax issues as a child.