Inheritance question

[Blair Murphy]

Hi,

Question...I bought my 4-plex in California 3 years ago and at the time I was (and still am) married. My wife is Japanese (non-US citizen), we have a kid with dual citizenship and we live and work in Japan. When we were buying our property, my wife signed off on sole and separate property to me because at the time we were on a strict timeline and we didn't have the flexibility of being able to have all the necessary checks the lending company wanted to conduct on her. I'm curious if in the event of anything happening to me, would she get the property even though she's not a US citizen and signed over the sole and separate property rights to me? I definitely would want her to get the property.

Thanks in advance!

[Rick H.]

@Blair Murphy You are asking a legal question that sounds simple, but might require a conditional answer: it depends.

Your wife is your legal heir, irrespective of her citizenship. In CA, a decedents estate  passes to their heirs immediately upon death, subject to administration of the estate. That's almost verbatim from the Probate Code, section 7001.

Of course, there could be plenty of things (or people) who would try to interfere, including creditors and possibly other claimants.

That's why you would be smart to find a CA attorney who is a certified trust and estate planning attorney to put your plan in place. Especially important is your wife's need for a plan that is sensative to her level of comfort with English language, customs and some flexibility as to whether she might live in CA and continue to operate the prooerty as a rental.

I might caution that if the property is held in trust, your current lender should not care but should you wish to refi later, title will most likely require taking out of any trust temporarily to close new loan.

This is provably more than you wanted, which was a simple, sound-bite answer. However, with a little planning you can have peach if mind and rest easy that your wife will not have to worry should you become incapacitated or worse. 

By the way, some years ago I had some had a health emergency that included a coma. My planning made it a little easily for my family to take all the required action.