Property Transfer: Attorney’s Guide 2026

Short answer: In California estate planning, a deed matters most at two moments: when you move a home into a living trust while you are alive, and when real property passes to an heir or beneficiary after a death. Ridley Law’s flat fee for a complete trust based estate plan, $4,100 for a married couple or $3,700 for a single person, includes the deed that retitles your California home into the trust. Getting that deed wrong, or skipping it entirely, is one of the most common reasons a trust fails to do the one thing it was built to do.

Why does a deed matter if I already signed a trust?

A living trust only controls property that is actually titled in its name. Signing the trust document does not, by itself, move your house into the trust. That happens through a deed, typically a grant deed, that transfers title from you as an individual to you as trustee of your trust. If that deed is never signed and recorded, the house stays in your individual name and passes through probate at your death regardless of what the trust says. A will does not fix this either. A will requires probate to take effect; it does not avoid probate, and only a funded revocable living trust passes assets to beneficiaries outside of the probate court.

Does deeding my house into a trust change my property taxes?

No. Moving a home you already own into your own revocable living trust does not disturb your existing Proposition 13 base year value, and it does not affect your later ability to use the over 55 base year value transfer if you otherwise qualify for it. You remain the owner in every way that matters to the assessor. The transfer that actually risks a reassessment is the one that happens later, when the property passes to the next generation.

What deed do I need when I inherit a house from a parent?

Inherited real property needs a new deed reflecting the new owner, whether that owner takes title through the trust, through probate, or through one of California’s small estate procedures. If the home was the deceased parent’s primary residence, California’s AB 2016 procedure lets a surviving spouse, domestic partner, or child petition the court to transfer a residence valued up to $750,000 without a full probate, under Probate Code § 13151, for deaths on or after April 1, 2025. Other real property that is not a primary residence can sometimes move with a simpler affidavit recorded with the county recorder, if its gross value is $69,625 or less, under Probate Code § 13150, after a six month waiting period from the date of death.

The new deed also carries income tax consequences. Inherited property generally receives a step up in basis to its fair market value on the date of death, under Internal Revenue Code § 1014. For California community property, both halves of the asset step up in basis when the first spouse dies, not just the deceased spouse’s half. Property held in joint tenancy only gets a step up on the deceased owner’s half. Which category your parents used to hold title can change the tax bill on a later sale by a significant amount.

Will transferring an inherited house trigger a property tax reassessment?

Often, unless an exclusion applies. California’s Proposition 19 parent to child exclusion lets a child keep a parent’s lower assessed value on an inherited home, but only if the child moves in and makes it a principal residence within one year of the transfer and files for the homeowners’ exemption, under Revenue and Taxation Code § 63.2 and California Constitution article XIII A, § 2.1. The exclusion is also capped: for transfers occurring between February 16, 2025 and February 15, 2027, it covers the home’s factored base year value plus $1,044,586. Above that, the excess is added to the new assessed value.

Holding the property in a trust does not change any of this. Whether the deed comes out of a trust, out of probate, or out of a small estate affidavit, reassessment under Proposition 19 turns on the child’s occupancy and the exemption filing, not on whose name sat on title beforehand.

What to do next

If you have a living trust and are not certain your house is actually deeded into it, pull your deed and check how title is held. If you just inherited property from a parent or spouse, the transfer procedure, and the deed language, depends on the property’s value, whether it was the decedent’s primary residence, and whether the estate needs to go through probate. Talk to an estate planning attorney before you record anything. A recorded deed is hard to undo, and an error on the Proposition 19 filing window can cost far more than the cost of getting it checked first.

Figures verified July 2026.