When I inhareted my fathers home, I was refused my tax break because my fathers sister was next in line on the will.

Something is not right about that chain of events. Who you inherited from should not have any impact on property taxes. However, some things that could have an impact on your property tax is the current valuation (which may have been capped if your father was elderly) and homestead/age/disability & other exemptions. You will need to have someone look at the tax assessments as they were issued to your father and the new tax assessments as they were issued to you to see what the difference was. You will want to do this quickly, because the time periods for filing appeals can be short and strict - as in even if the tax clearly should have been lower, you could lose the tax break by failing to appeal on time. If there is something special in California law about portions of exemptions surviving a title transfer due to inheritance, I or the attorney you hire should see whatever paperwork you received on that.

Prop 58 says that the transfer from your father of his principal residence to you is not a “change of ownership” triggering reassessment for property tax purposes. See R&T Code Section 63.1 provides “63.1. Transfers between parents and their children. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this chapter, a change in ownership shall not include the following purchases or transfers for which a claim is filed pursuant to this section: “(1) (A) The purchase or transfer of real property which is the principal residence of an eligible transferor in the case of a purchase or transfer between parents and their children.” If the property was transferred to your aunt’s estate, the transfer would not qualify. But the fact that she was “next in line” should not affect your position as long as neither she nor her estate held title in the interim. You should consult a California real estate lawyer about it. Texas lawyers should not attempt to opine on something so uniquely local as California’s Prop 13 and its progeny.

Your facts are not entirely clear. In California a transfer from a parent to a child of a principal residence is exempt from reassessment in an unlimited amount for a principal residence and $1 million for an investment property. If the transfer was from your dad to you then you should have received the exemption. You will need to have an attorney review your specific facts and apply for the adjustment in the assessment. Do not delay. The new assessed value will be for as long as you own the property if you do not do something.

It is possible that either the person who filed the Preliminary Change of Ownership Report when deeding the property to you from your father's estate failed to fill it out correctly, or that the assessor's office accidentally failed to report it correctly. Even if your father's sister was due to inherit and she waived her inheritance to you, it shouldn't have voided the parent-child exemption. The question is (1) is there something in the chain of events that led to this result; and (2) at this point in time, can anything be done to repair the problem (the property already having been re-assessed). I suggest that you sit down with a probate attorney and lay all the facts and documents in front of him/her to find some resolution.