Property Ownership in California

Civil Code Division 2, Part 1, Title 2 deals with ownership of property in California.

Chapter 1 deals with owners. Section 669 provides that all property has an owner, whether that owner is the State, and the property public, or the owner an individual, and the property private. The State may also hold property as a private proprietor.

Section 670 explains that the State is the owner of all land below tide water, and below ordinary high-water mark, bordering upon tide water within the State; of all land below the water of a navigable lake or stream; of all property lawfully appropriated by it to its own use; of all property dedicated to the State; and of all property of which there is no other owner.

Section 671 states that any person, regardless of their citizenship status, may take, hold, and dispose of property, real or personal, within this state.

Chapter 3 deals with the rights of owners. Section 732 provides that the owner of a thing owns also all its products and accessions.

Section 733 states that when, in consequence of a valid limitation of a future interest, there is a suspension of the power of alienation or of the ownership during the continuation of which the income is undisposed of, and no valid direction for its accumulation is given, the income belongs to the persons presumptively entitled to the next eventual interest.

Chapter 4 deals with the termination of ownership. Section 739 provides that a future interest, depending on the contingency of the death of any person without successors, heirs, issue, or children, is defeated by the birth of a posthumous child of such person, capable of taking by succession.

Section 740 allows a future interest to be defeated in any manner or by any act or means which the party creating the interest provided for or authorized in the creation thereof.

Section 741 provides that no future interest can be defeated or barred by any alienation or other act of the owner of the intermediate or precedent interest, nor by any destruction of such precedent interest by forfeiture, surrender, merger, or otherwise.

Section 742 explains that no future interest, valid in its creation, is defeated by the determination of the precedent interest before the happening of the contingency on which the future interest is limited to take effect; but should the contingency afterwards happen, the future interest takes effect in the same manner and to the same extent as if the precedent interest had continued to the same period.