In California, a Will is not sufficient to avoid probate and the assets would need to be held in a family trust or in joint tenancy to avoid the probate process.  

Hey @Brian H. we run a 100% all cash private money fund based in Charlotte, NC.

I'm going to be doing a 1031 exchange on a property I own and I was curious if it is possible to use some of the funds to do capital improvements on the property(s).

If you are going the conventional route, you can avoid the gifting requirement by seasoning your mother's funds for 2+ months. 

An agreement to get paid back if it doesn't close will only protect you if you go to court, and if they would even have the funds to pay you for it.

You could even just put it all into index funds.  

Because it's hard to find much that will cashflow in the area (and because I'm bullish on the area overall), as a buy and hold investor I'd probably keep it, and get a HELOC to hopefully fund another deal with.  

We are looking at putting a fund together to take advantage of it. 

Since this would be my first rental property (and first property in general), is it best to put 20% down and use the rest your money to fund other RE investments or pay it off in cash and build up from there?

Once you leave the corp job, and become self employed, you can roll all of those funds into a solo 401K and own real estate within your 401K.Keep the corp job until you're debt free, and your cash flow more then replaces your salary.