California Property Laws

Kinds of Property

1. Personal Property

Movable property owned by an individual — not land, and not attached to land. “Every kind of property that is not real is personal.”

2. Real Property

Land and everything affixed, incidental, or appurtenant to it — including buildings and anything attached to the land. Condominiums are real property.

3. Separate Property

Any property acquired before marriage, after separation, or at any time by gift or bequest. Can be real or personal. Spouses can agree in writing to change the character of any property to separate or community.

4. Quasi-Marital Property

The court must first find the marriage void or voidable, then find one or both parties had a reasonable, good-faith belief the marriage was valid, and then declare the marriage putative. Once declared putative, the court can divide the property acquired during the union — equally or not — as if it were community property.

5. Quasi-Community Property

Real or personal property, wherever located, acquired by either spouse while domiciled outside California that would have been community property if the acquiring spouse had been domiciled in California at the time.

6. Community Property

All property, real or personal, wherever located, acquired by a married person or couple during the marriage while domiciled in California. Each spouse's interest during the marriage is present, existing, and equal.

Title to Real Property

Holding title

Spouses may hold title to real property as joint tenants, tenants in common, community property, community property with a right of survivorship, or in trust. An example: “Property is deeded to John and Maria Garcia as joint tenants,” or “to John and Maria Garcia, husband and wife, as community property.”

Joint tenancy gives each spouse an undivided equal right to possess the property. Joint tenancy requires that title be acquired at the same time and by the same conveyance, and the title must expressly state that the spouses hold as joint tenants.

Joint tenants

When a joint tenant dies, title conveys automatically by operation of law to the surviving joint tenant. If a joint tenant feloniously and intentionally kills the other, however, the property passes as the decedent's property and the killer takes nothing by survivorship.

Tenants in common

Spouses holding title as tenants in common may own unequal shares. Tenants-in-common deeds also allow multiple people to own property together with distinct, transferable interests.

Community property with a right of survivorship

Automatic conveyance to the surviving spouse by operation of law.

In trust

Spouses may hold property in a trust. If community property is transferred into a trust, unless the trust provides otherwise, the transferred property remains community property. The trust must be revocable as to the property transferred. Modifying the property during the marriage requires the consent of both spouses, and either spouse can revoke unless the trust expressly says otherwise.