A declaration of non-monetary status is a special type of court filing reserved for trustees under a deed of trust. These trustees have limited powers, but are often named as defendants in lawsuits by plaintiffs seeking to ensure proper joinder. Of course, being named in a complaint carries with it…
Civil Code section 2924 states that “every transfer of an interest in property, other than in trust, made only as a security for the performance of another act, is to be deemed a mortgage.” The “other than in trust” portion of the statute refers only to express trusts, however, because…
“A trust is any arrangement which exists whereby property is transferred with an intention that it be held and administered by the transferee for the benefit of another.” (Higgins v. Higgins (2017) 11 Cal.App.5th 648, 662.) Essentially, a trust is a legal relationship that allows a person to hold property…
Anytime a litigant wants to file a lawsuit, a threshold question is where the lawsuit should be filed. Specifically, the question is what county should get to hear the action. This process is called determining “venue,” and it can become quite a complicated endeavor. This is because the “correct” county…
When a loved one passes away, probate proceedings are hopefully not the first thing on their relatives’ minds. Probate is, however, an inevitability, even when a trust is present and effective. But inheritance is not always the blessing that the public conscious imagines it to be. The simple truth is…
A Heggstad petition is a unique legal maneuver in probate court that a party can use to establish the existence of a trust. Normally, if a party wants to show that the property at issue is in a family trust, they have to produce evidence of a transfer of the…
A deed of trust is a commonly used mortgage document in California. Essentially, a deed of trust provides a lender with security for the repayment of the loan and effectively functions similarly to a mortgage. A deed of trust is a deed that transfers a legal interest in a piece…