California Inheritance Laws: Wills, Probate, and Taxes

California inheritance laws combine community property rules, intestate succession statutes, and probate procedures to decide who receives a person’s assets after death. The state charges no inheritance tax and no estate tax, and federal estate tax applies only to estates above $15 million per person as of 2026.¹ What the rules actually deliver to a spouse, child, or other heir depends on how the property was owned, whether there’s a will, and — for real estate — whether the heir plans to live in the home.

Community Property Sets the Baseline

Before anything else, California sorts a married person’s assets into two categories. Under Family Code Section 760, anything a spouse acquires during the marriage while living in California is presumed community property, with each spouse owning an undivided half.² Separate property is what a spouse owned before marriage, plus gifts and inheritances directed to one spouse alone.

This distinction controls what a will can do. A will only reaches the decedent’s half of community property. The surviving spouse already owns the other half outright, and no will provision can change that.

Couples who moved to California from another state get similar treatment through quasi-community property: assets acquired elsewhere that would have been community property had the couple lived here at the time.³ When one spouse dies, the survivor is treated as if those assets had always been community property.

Who Inherits Without a Will

If someone dies without a valid will, California’s intestacy statutes decide who gets what.⁴ The surviving spouse takes the decedent’s half of community and quasi-community property, giving the spouse full ownership of everything in that category.

Separate property splits differently depending on who else survives:

No children, parents, or siblings: the spouse inherits all of it.
One child, or descendants of one deceased child: the spouse takes half, the child’s side takes half.
More than one child or their descendants: the spouse takes one-third, and the children share two-thirds equally.
No children but a surviving parent or sibling: the spouse takes half, and the parents or siblings take the other half.

When no spouse survives, separate property passes first to children, then parents, then siblings and their descendants, then grandparents and further out. Registered domestic partners in California hold the same inheritance rights as spouses throughout.⁴

What Makes a Will Valid

A formal witnessed will under Probate Code Section 6110 must be written and signed by the testator, or signed by someone else at the testator’s direction and in their presence. Two witnesses must sign during the testator’s lifetime, both present at the same time when they either watch the signing or hear the testator acknowledge the signature.⁵ Even when a will falls short of these formalities, a court can still accept it if clear and convincing evidence shows the testator intended the document as their will.

Handwritten holographic wills are also valid. The signature and the material provisions must be in the testator’s own handwriting, and no witnesses are required.⁶ They’re easier to challenge in court because no witnesses can vouch for the testator’s state of mind. Any will requires testamentary capacity: the testator must understand what they own and who their natural heirs are.

Spouses and Children Left Out of an Old Will

California protects family members added to a testator’s life after the will was signed. If someone marries after making a will and never updates it, the surviving spouse takes a mandatory share: the decedent’s half of community and quasi-community property, plus up to half the value of separate property.⁷ The protection doesn’t apply if the testator provided for the new spouse outside the will and evidence shows that arrangement was meant as a substitute.

A child born or adopted after the will was signed gets a similar rule. Unless the will shows clear intent to exclude the child, the omitted child takes the share they would have received under intestacy, drawn proportionally from what other beneficiaries were set to inherit.⁸ The practical lesson is to revise the will after any marriage, birth, or adoption.

Assets That Bypass Probate

A large share of what people leave behind never touches the probate court. Ownership form and beneficiary designations move these assets directly:

Joint tenancy with right of survivorship. When one owner dies, the survivor automatically owns the whole.
Revocable living trusts. A successor trustee distributes assets under the trust’s terms with no court involvement.
Payable-on-death and transfer-on-death designations on bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and (in California) real property.
Life insurance and retirement accounts, which pass by contract to named beneficiaries.
Community property with right of survivorship, which combines automatic transfer with a full tax basis adjustment on both halves.

That last option carries a tax advantage worth understanding. Under federal law, when one spouse dies, both halves of community property receive a stepped-up basis to fair market value.⁹ With ordinary joint tenancy, only the decedent’s half is adjusted. On a long-held family home, the difference can amount to hundreds of thousands in capital gains tax if the surviving spouse later sells.

What Probate Costs

When assets don’t transfer automatically, probate is the court-supervised process for settling the estate. It starts with a petition in the Superior Court of the county where the deceased lived, at a filing fee of $435 in most counties.¹⁰ The court appoints a personal representative — an executor if the will names one, an administrator if not — to manage debts and distributions.

The bigger cost is the statutory fee schedule. The personal representative and the attorney are each entitled to a percentage of the appraised estate:

4% of the first $100,000
3% of the next $100,000
2% of the next $800,000
1% of the next $9,000,000
0.5% of the next $15,000,000
A reasonable amount set by the court above $25,000,000

Both parties collect these fees separately, so the total effectively doubles. A $1 million estate produces $23,000 for the attorney and $23,000 for the representative, or $46,000 before any extraordinary fees for complications.¹¹ That cost drives many California residents to use living trusts.

Simplified Alternatives

Smaller estates can skip full probate. For deaths on or after April 1, 2025, if the decedent’s California property (excluding items like joint tenancy and trust assets) doesn’t exceed $208,850, heirs can collect personal property with a sworn affidavit at least 40 days after death.¹²

Surviving spouses have a broader shortcut. Under Probate Code Section 13500, community property passing to the surviving spouse — by intestacy or by will — transfers with no administration required.¹³ A spousal property petition confirms ownership through a straightforward filing, avoiding the percentage-based fees entirely.

Property Tax Reassessment on Inherited Real Estate

Proposition 19, effective February 2021, changed how children inherit a parent’s property tax base, and this is the piece most heirs don’t see coming. Before Prop 19, children could inherit a parent’s home and up to $1 million of other real property with no reassessment. That’s over.¹⁴

A parent-to-child transfer of a primary residence now avoids reassessment only if the child moves in as their own primary residence within one year and files for the homeowner’s exemption within that same year. Even then, the exclusion is capped. If the home’s current market value exceeds the parent’s taxable value by more than roughly $1,044,586 (the adjusted figure for transfers through February 2027), the excess is added to the property’s tax base.¹⁵

Inherited property that won’t be the child’s primary residence — a rental, vacation home, or commercial building — gets no exclusion. It’s reassessed at full market value. A home with a decades-old assessed value of $200,000 and a market value of $1.5 million could jump from roughly $2,500 to nearly $19,000 in annual property tax. Families planning to keep a parent’s rental as a long-term investment should run those numbers before deciding whether to hold or sell.

Federal Tax on Inherited Assets

California collects no state inheritance tax and no state estate tax.¹⁶ Federal estate tax applies only to estates above $15 million per person, or $30 million for a married couple, following the One Big Beautiful Bill signed on July 4, 2025.¹ Estates below the threshold owe nothing federally, and heirs don’t pay income tax simply for receiving an inheritance.

Step-Up in Basis

Inherited property takes a tax basis equal to its fair market value on the date of death, not what the decedent originally paid.⁹ Stock a parent bought for $10,000 that was worth $500,000 at death has a $500,000 basis in the heir’s hands. Sell it that month for $500,000 and there’s no capital gains tax.

For California married couples, both halves of community property step up when one spouse dies, not just the decedent’s half.⁹ That’s a meaningful advantage over separate property states. A surviving spouse who sells shortly after the other spouse’s death often owes little or no capital gains tax on the whole asset.

Inherited Retirement Accounts

IRAs and 401(k)s follow rules of their own. A surviving spouse can roll an inherited retirement account into their own IRA and keep deferring taxes. Other beneficiaries face tighter deadlines.¹⁷

Most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited retirement account within 10 years of the account owner’s death. Withdrawals from a traditional IRA or 401(k) are taxed as ordinary income, so draining a large account in a short window can push heirs into higher brackets. Exceptions apply for minor children of the deceased, disabled or chronically ill individuals, and beneficiaries no more than 10 years younger than the account owner — that group can stretch distributions over their own life expectancy.¹⁷ Inherited Roth IRAs still follow the 10-year rule, but qualified withdrawals come out tax-free.

1
Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax
2
California Legislative Information. California Code FAM 760 – Community Property
3
California Legislative Information. California Code Probate Code 66 – Quasi-Community Property
4
Justia. California Code Probate Code 6400-6414 – Intestate Succession Generally
5
Justia. California Code Probate Code 6110-6113 – Execution of Wills
6
California Legislative Information. California Code Probate Code 6111 – Holographic Will
7
California Legislative Information. California Code Probate Code 21610
8
California Legislative Information. California Code Probate Code 21620
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1014 – Basis of Property Acquired From a Decedent
10
California Courts. Statewide Civil Fee Schedule
11
California Legislative Information. California Code PROB 10810 – Compensation for Ordinary Services
12
California Courts. Maximum Values for Small Estate Set-Aside and Disposition
13
California Legislative Information. California Code PROB 13500
14
California State Board of Equalization. Proposition 19
15
California State Board of Equalization. Proposition 19 Fact Sheet
16
California State Controller. California Estate Tax
17
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary