What Disclosures Do You Have to Give When Selling an Inherited House in California?

Do you have to give disclosures when selling an inherited house in California?

Usually you are exempt from the Transfer Disclosure Statement, but you are never exempt from telling buyers what you actually know. California Civil Code section 1102.2 excuses a trustee, executor, or administrator from the standard TDS when they are selling as part of administering an estate or trust. That exemption disappears if you owned the home before it went into the trust or lived in it within the year before the sale. And regardless of the exemption, the natural hazard report, the lead paint disclosure on older homes, the three-year death disclosure, HOA documents, and your common law duty to disclose known material defects all still apply.

By Ben Larson | August 25, 2026

If you search this question, you will get two confident and completely opposite answers.

One set of results tells you probate and trust sales are exempt from California disclosure law. Another set tells you estate representatives have to disclose everything, even if they never set foot in the house. Both are circulating widely. Neither one is right.

Here is the version that actually matters when you are the person signing.

The exemption is real, and it is narrower than most people are told

California does carve out fiduciary sellers. If you are a successor trustee selling your mother's house out of her living trust, or a court-appointed executor selling through probate, you are generally not required to complete the Real Estate Transfer Disclosure Statement. That is the long form where a normal seller checks boxes about the roof, the plumbing, the neighbors, and everything else they have lived with.

The logic is straightforward. You did not live there. You cannot honestly answer questions about a water heater you have never seen.

Now here is the part that catches people. The exemption is tied to your relationship with the property, not to your title. You lose it if either of these is true:

• You owned the property yourself before it was transferred into the trust
• You occupied the property at any point in the twelve months before the sale

That second one is the trap. I see it on the Peninsula regularly. An adult child moves back into a parent's Rancho Palos Verdes house during a final illness, stays a few months to handle the estate, and assumes the trust exemption still covers them. It does not. You lived there inside the window, so you file the full TDS like any other seller.

If you are not sure which side of that line you are on, that is a question for the estate attorney before you sign a listing agreement, not after you are in escrow.

What you still owe buyers either way

This is where the "probate sales are exempt" crowd gets people in trouble. The TDS exemption removes one form. It does not remove your obligation to be honest about what you know.

Even with a valid exemption, these still apply:

• Known material defects. If you know the deck is rotted or the garage floods, you disclose it. This is a common law duty and it has nothing to do with the TDS. It is also the single most common source of post-closing lawsuits against estates.
• Natural Hazard Disclosure report. Fire severity zone, flood, earthquake fault, landslide. On the Palos Verdes Peninsula this is not a formality.
• Death of an occupant within the past three years. California Civil Code section 1710.2 sets a three-year window, and it applies to any cause of death. If your parent passed away in the home, you are inside that window.
• Lead-based paint disclosure on anything built before 1978, which covers a large share of Torrance, Lomita, and the older beach cities inventory.
• HOA documents. Being a fiduciary does not waive delivery of governing documents, budgets, and minutes on a condo or planned development.
• Megan's Law database notice and the supplemental property tax notice.

Your agent also owes the buyer an Agent Visual Inspection Disclosure. That is the agent's obligation under Civil Code section 2079, not yours, but it means a licensed person is walking the property and writing down what they see. If something shows up on that form that contradicts what the estate said it knew, that is a problem worth getting ahead of.

The form you will actually be handed

Instead of the TDS, exempt sellers typically sign a C.A.R. Exempt Seller Disclosure, or ESD.

Do not read this as a pass. It is a short form that asks you to state what you personally know about the property, and it includes the three-year death question directly. Signing it while sitting on information you have is a materially worse position than filling out the TDS honestly would have been.

The right way to complete it is boring and effective. Write down what you know, write "no knowledge" where that is genuinely true, and do not guess in either direction. "No knowledge" is a legitimate and defensible answer for a trustee who never lived in the house. Inventing reassurance is not.

What this looks like on a South Bay listing

The Peninsula and the beach cities produce an unusual number of estate sales. Ownership tenures in Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills Estates, and Rancho Palos Verdes are among the longest in Los Angeles County, which means a large share of what comes to market arrives through a successor trustee who has never sold a house before.

A few local specifics that come up constantly:

Insurance and fire zones. Peninsula buyers are going to ask what it costs to insure the property, and on parts of the Peninsula that answer is complicated. This is not technically a disclosure issue, but pulling quotes before you list and putting them in the disclosure package removes the biggest unknown from a buyer's decision. Deals stall on this more than on anything you would find in an inspection report.

Torrance point-of-sale requirements. The City of Torrance requires a code compliance certificate before closing, covering low-flow fixtures, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, and a properly strapped water heater. Some addresses carrying a Torrance zip code sit outside the incorporated city limits, which changes whether the certificate applies. Verify the city line early. Heirs routinely confuse this requirement with disclosure, and it is neither optional nor a disclosure.

Peninsula geology. Landslide and geologic history is a material fact category. If the estate has old soils reports, engineering correspondence, or repair records sitting in a filing cabinet, that paperwork belongs in the disclosure package. Buyers and their inspectors will find the history regardless. Producing it yourself is the stronger position.

Deferred maintenance. Most estate properties have some. Selling in current condition is completely normal and often the right call for an estate, especially since spending estate funds on elective improvements without beneficiary agreement creates its own set of problems. But selling in current condition is not the same as selling silently. A pre-listing inspection typically runs a few hundred dollars and gives you a documented, dated record of the property's condition, which is exactly what you want if someone comes back at the estate a year later.

What I tell trustees before we list

Get the disclosure question settled before the sign goes in the yard, not during escrow. That means three conversations, usually in this order.

1. The estate attorney, to confirm your authority and whether the exemption applies to your specific facts.
2. A CPA or tax attorney, for anything involving basis, valuation dates, or what the sale means financially. I do not give tax advice and neither should any agent.
3. Your agent, to build the disclosure package and price the property against what a buyer is realistically going to find.

Trustees and executors carry a fiduciary duty to the beneficiaries, and a sloppy disclosure package is one of the few ways a well-priced sale can still turn into a problem months after closing. It is also entirely preventable.

If you are earlier in the process and still working out who has the authority to sign, my South Bay trustee's guide to selling a house in a trust covers that ground. If the sticking point is family rather than paperwork, whether all heirs have to agree to sell is the more useful starting point. For a standard owner-occupied sale, the rules are different, and what Palos Verdes Estates sellers are required to tell buyers lays out the full form set.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fill out a TDS if the house was in my parent's trust?

Generally no, as long as you are selling as successor trustee, you never owned the property personally, and you did not live in it during the twelve months before the sale. You will typically sign a C.A.R. Exempt Seller Disclosure instead. If either of those occupancy or ownership conditions applies to you, the exemption is lost and the full TDS is required.

My father passed away in the house. Do I have to tell buyers?

Yes, if it happened within the past three years. California Civil Code section 1710.2 requires disclosure of a death of an occupant on the property within that window, regardless of cause. After three years there is no affirmative duty to volunteer it, but if a buyer asks you directly, you answer honestly.

Can the estate still get sued after closing if we were exempt from the TDS?

Yes. The exemption removes a form, not the duty to disclose known material facts. Post-closing claims against estates almost always turn on something the representative knew and did not pass along, not on a missing checkbox. A pre-listing inspection and a thorough disclosure package are the practical defense.

We are selling the house in current condition. Does that change what we have to disclose?

No. Selling in current condition sets expectations about repairs, not about honesty. You still disclose known material defects. Buyers can still inspect. An as-is sale with a complete disclosure package is a clean transaction, and an as-is sale used to avoid disclosure is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

I live out of state. Can I handle the disclosures remotely?

Yes. California allows remote online notarization, and disclosure documents are routinely signed electronically. The harder part is knowledge, not logistics. If you have never been inside the property, your agent's walkthrough, a pre-listing inspection, and any records the family has become the backbone of the disclosure package.

Does an inherited condo in the beach cities have different requirements?

The disclosure exemption analysis is the same, but you add HOA obligations on top. Governing documents, current budget, reserve study, meeting minutes, and any pending assessments or litigation all have to be delivered, and fiduciary status does not waive that.

If you are a trustee, executor, or heir preparing to sell a South Bay property and you want a straight read on what the house is worth and what the disclosure package needs to include, request a home valuation. I will walk you through both.

This article covers process and is not legal or tax advice. Confirm your specific obligations with a probate or trust attorney, and route any tax question to a CPA or tax attorney.

About Ben Larson
Ben Larson leads Larson Realty Group, powered by Real Broker, serving the South Bay of Los Angeles. Licensed since 2006 with more than $100 million in closed sales, he specializes in listings across the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the beach cities, and works extensively with probate, trust, and inherited property sales. Reach him at larsonrealty.group. DRE #01746853.