Q: Should I inherit my father's property if he held in joint tenancy with his second wife?  There trust says I get all their property when they have both died.

A: No, not unless the second wife adopted you as one of her children.  This is a really common and, speaking frankly, dumb mistake.  Creating a trust only gets you half way to having a complete estate plan.  The other half is funding the trust with the property that belongs inside.  Parents are setting their children up for failure when they don't bother to fund their own trust.

Property held in joint tenancy passes to the surviving joint tenant.  If your father holds property in joint tenancy with his second wife then she's the one who has title when he dies.  Assuming she doesn't put it into the trust, then when she dies it's going to go through probate, and will pass by the laws of intestate succession.  That means the property will pass to her children and if she doesn't have any children then will pass along her bloodlines.  If you haven't been adopted then you are not going to get that property.

That's not to say that there aren't some situations where you might have a shot at getting the property back through trust litigation.  If property had been titled in the trust and was taken out of the trust to be put in some kind of multiparty account then you may have a successful argument that the property was always intended to be trust property and some mistake was made with title.

The Grossman Law Firm, A.P.C. are Riverside, California probate lawyers.  We help probate estates in Riverside County, California.  We appear in the Riverside probate court for cases in the area bounded by Temecula, Corona, and Banning, California.  We appear in the Palm Springs/Indio probate court for cases from Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Desert Hot Springs, Cathedral City, Indian Wells, and Indio, California.  If you  would like more information on probate and trust administration then order our free book The Insider's Guide to California Probate and Trust Administration as well as our free DVD Probate a Will or Administer a Trust After the Death of a Loved One.