Texas Transfer on Death Deed: Chapter 114 Rules, Step by Step

The deed borrows the logic of a payable-on-death bank account and applies it to land. You sign a deed today that names a beneficiary, record it with the county clerk, and then nothing happens. Section 114.101 makes the point bluntly: during your lifetime the deed does not affect your ownership, does not give the beneficiary any interest, does not expose the property to the beneficiary's creditors, and does not affect your homestead exemption, your property tax status, or your eligibility for public benefits. You can sell the house and keep the proceeds, refinance it, lease it, or record a revocation, and nobody needs to be notified.

At your death the deed takes effect by operation of law. Under Section 114.103, a beneficiary who survives you by 120 hours takes the property in accordance with the deed; if you named several beneficiaries, they take equal undivided shares with no right of survivorship unless the deed says otherwise. The share of a beneficiary who dies before you, or within those 120 hours, lapses and passes under the anti-lapse rules that apply to wills, which is why a well-drafted deed names alternates rather than trusting the default.

No probate case is opened for the property. In practice the beneficiary records a certified death certificate together with a short affidavit of death in the county real property records so the chain of title shows the transfer. The statute does not require that affidavit, but title companies and county appraisal districts expect it, and it is the document that lets the beneficiary sell or borrow against the home later.

Section 114.055 lists exactly three requirements, and each one is a trap for a homemade deed. First, the instrument must contain the essential elements and formalities of a recordable deed: the owner's name, the beneficiary's name, a legal description of the property (the lot-and-block or metes-and-bounds description from the existing deed, never the street address alone), the owner's signature, and a notary acknowledgment. Second, it must state that the transfer to the beneficiary occurs at the owner's death. Third, it must be recorded before the owner's death in the deed records of the county clerk's office where the property is located. A deed signed and notarized but left in a drawer, or recorded a day after the funeral, is void.

Section 114.054 adds two rules that surprise families. The capacity required is the capacity to make a contract, which is a higher bar than the capacity to sign a will. And the deed may not be created through a power of attorney: an agent under even the broadest durable power of attorney cannot sign a transfer on death deed for a parent. Once a parent has lost capacity, the deed is off the table and the family is left with a court proceeding or a trust-based plan that should have been done earlier. Our guide to how the Medicaid look-back period counts transfers explains why the deed remains attractive even late, provided the owner can still sign.

Section 114.056 removes the formalities that ordinary deeds require. No consideration is needed, the beneficiary does not have to be told, and no delivery or acceptance is required during the owner's life. The deed simply has to be valid on its face and recorded.

When Chapter 114 took effect in 2015 it included an optional fill-in form in Section 114.151 and a revocation form in Section 114.152. In 2019 the 86th Legislature repealed both through House Bill 2782, effective September 1, 2019, after title examiners and probate lawyers reported that the form invited errors, including deeds that named beneficiaries in ways that created ambiguities at death. The bill directed the Supreme Court of Texas to promulgate replacement forms but set no deadline, and as of 2025 no replacement form has been issued. The repeal did not invalidate deeds signed on the old form before or after the effective date.

The practical result is that a Texas transfer on death deed is now drafted, not filled in. The drafter has to supply the essential elements of a recordable deed, the statutory statement that the transfer occurs at death, a correct legal description, the survival and alternate-beneficiary language, and a description of how multiple beneficiaries take. Copies of the repealed form still circulate online, and while a deed on that form may be valid, using a repealed form invites exactly the ambiguities the Legislature was trying to remove. The Texas State Law Library notes the gap; families who want the deed generally have it prepared by an attorney or use a reviewed form drafted to the statute's elements rather than to the old template.

Because the deed is revocable until death, changing your mind is easy, but only if you follow Section 114.057. A recorded deed is revoked by a later transfer on death deed that revokes it expressly or by inconsistency, or by a separate instrument of revocation, in either case acknowledged after the original deed and recorded before your death in the same county. Two things do not work: a will cannot revoke or override a transfer on death deed, and simply signing a new deed without recording it changes nothing. If you sell the property during life, the deed becomes moot as to that property because you no longer own it at death.

Divorce is handled by the statute. If your marriage to a designated beneficiary is dissolved after the deed is recorded, the final divorce judgment revokes the deed as to that former spouse, provided notice of the judgment is recorded in the deed records before your death. A divorced owner who never records that notice, or who wants the former spouse to inherit anyway, needs a new recorded deed to make the intent clear.

Joint owners deserve special attention. If two owners hold as joint tenants with right of survivorship and one dies, the property passes to the surviving joint owner, not to the beneficiary named in the deceased owner's transfer on death deed; the deed only takes effect on the death of the last surviving joint owner who signed it. Married Texans holding community property usually sign one deed together for this reason.

The transfer on death deed avoids probate, but Section 114.106 keeps the property within reach of estate creditors for a limited time. If the probate estate is insufficient to pay debts, allowances in lieu of exempt property, and family allowances, the personal representative may enforce a liability against the transferred property, and if the representative does nothing within 90 days of a demand, a creditor, heir, surviving spouse, guardian of a minor or incapacitated child, or taxing authority may bring the proceeding directly. The claim must be brought within two years after the owner's death. Property passed by transfer on death deed is liable only as a last resort, after probate assets are exhausted, and liability is apportioned among nonprobate assets by value.

That two-year window has a practical cost: Texas title companies often decline to insure a sale or a new mortgage on transfer on death deed property until the window closes or until they receive proof that the estate's debts were paid. A beneficiary planning to sell quickly should expect the title company to ask for a probate, an affidavit regarding debts, or a waiting period.

Medicaid estate recovery is a different question. The Texas Medicaid Estate Recovery Program is limited to the probate estate of a deceased recipient, and property that passes outside probate by a properly recorded transfer on death deed is generally outside its reach as of 2025. The deed is therefore a common tool in Texas long-term care planning, with two caveats: the deed must be recorded before death or the home falls back into the probate estate where MERP can claim it, and Section 114.106 still allows ordinary estate creditors to reach the property if the probate estate cannot pay. Our guide to how Medicaid estate recovery differs state by state covers the probate-only distinction in detail.

Texas is one of the few states that recognizes both a statutory transfer on death deed and a lady bird deed, the enhanced life estate deed that exists by title practice rather than statute. Both avoid probate, both keep full lifetime control, both preserve the stepped-up basis, and neither triggers a lender's due-on-sale clause. They differ at the edges. A lady bird deed can be signed by an agent under a power of attorney if the power expressly allows it, while a transfer on death deed cannot. A lady bird deed usually includes warranty language that protects the remainder beneficiary's title, and title companies are more accustomed to insuring it promptly after death; a transfer on death deed carries the statutory two-year creditor window. On the other hand the transfer on death deed runs on a clear statute, which makes recording and clerk acceptance uniform across all 254 counties, while acceptance of lady bird deeds varies by title underwriter. Our side by side comparison of the two probate-avoiding deeds works through the decision.

A revocable living trust is the third option, and the right one when the estate holds more than a home, when incapacity planning matters, or when the beneficiaries are minors or should not receive the property outright. The trust costs more to set up and requires the home to be deeded into it, but it manages every asset and handles a disabled owner's affairs without a guardianship. For a single Texas homestead with adult beneficiaries and a modest estate, the deed usually wins on cost and simplicity; for anything more complex, the revocable living trust that manages the whole estate is the better instrument.

Most Texas homes are both community property and homestead, and both features affect the deed. Community property is owned by both spouses, so one spouse's transfer on death deed reaches only that spouse's half interest. The Texas Constitution and Family Code Chapter 5 require both spouses to join in a conveyance of the homestead, and while a transfer on death deed conveys nothing during life, the safe practice is for both spouses to sign a single deed that names the beneficiaries and states what happens when the first spouse dies (commonly, the property passes to the surviving spouse, then to the children). A deed signed by one spouse alone invites a title objection later and can leave the surviving spouse co-owning with a child.

The homestead exemption, the over-65 or disability exemption, and the property tax ceiling all survive the recording of the deed because ownership does not change. After death, a surviving spouse who inherits keeps the homestead protections, and a child who inherits and moves in applies for the exemption fresh in the following year.

The deed is recorded with the county clerk in the county where the property is located, in person, by mail, or through the e-recording services most Texas counties now accept. The clerk indexes it in the official public records and returns the original. Under Local Government Code Section 118.011 the base filing fee is 5 dollars for the first page and 4 dollars for each additional page, but statutory add-ons for records management, archives, and courthouse security bring the first-page total to roughly 25 to 30 dollars in most counties as of 2025, plus 4 dollars per additional page. Clerks reject deeds without a notary acknowledgment, with an illegible legal description, or without the return address the recording statutes require.

Timing is everything. Record promptly after signing, keep the clerk's file-stamped copy with the estate papers, and tell the beneficiary where it is. After the owner's death, the beneficiary records the affidavit of death and death certificate in the same county. If a deed was never recorded and the owner has died, the family is back in probate or looking at an alternative route to move the deed after a death, such as an affidavit of heirship or a small estate affidavit.

• Using the street address instead of the legal description. The deed must describe the property the way the existing deed does; a mailing address alone is not a legal description and the deed may fail.
• Signing through a power of attorney. Section 114.054 forbids it, and clerks will record the deed anyway, so the defect surfaces only after death when a title examiner rejects it.
• Not recording before death. The single most common failure. An unrecorded deed is void and the home goes through probate.
• Relying on the repealed form. Copies of the old Section 114.151 form still circulate; deeds on it may be valid but carry the ambiguities the Legislature removed the form to prevent.
• No alternate beneficiary. If the only beneficiary dies first, the anti-lapse rules decide who inherits, which may not match the owner's wishes.
• Naming a minor. A minor cannot manage real estate; the deed should route a minor's share to a trust or a custodian under the Texas Uniform Transfers to Minors Act.
• One spouse signing for community property. The deed reaches only that spouse's half, and the survivor ends up co-owning with the children.
• Trying to revoke by will. Section 114.057(b) makes a will ineffective to revoke the deed; only a recorded instrument works.
• Quitclaiming to the children instead. A quitclaim deed used as a lifetime gift is a completed transfer that triggers the Medicaid look-back, exposes the home to the child's creditors, and forfeits the step-up in basis.

Public estimates for having a Texas transfer on death deed prepared by an attorney generally run from roughly 200 to 500 dollars as of 2025, with recording fees on top, which is a fraction of the cost of probating a home. Because the statutory form no longer exists, the value of a drafted deed lies in getting the elements right: the exact legal description pulled from the current deed, survival and alternate-beneficiary language, correct handling of community property and joint owners, and recording instructions for your county. If your facts point to a lady bird deed or a living trust instead, we say so before you pay.