Clear Money Guide
What this guide covers
A quick view of the questions and evidence developed below.
Guides › Transfer-on-Death Deeds
Updated July 31, 2026. Quick answer: for one house going to clear-cut beneficiaries, a transfer-on-death deed does the single thing most people buy a living trust for — keeping the home out of probate — at recording-fee cost instead of the roughly $2,700 a typical revocable-trust package runs. The trust earns its price when the situation is NOT simple: incapacity planning, multiple properties or states, minor or spendthrift beneficiaries, contingent chains (“to my spouse, then split among children, unless…”). The deed is a scalpel; the trust is a toolbox.
If the house is the whole problem
A transfer on death deed solves probate for one asset and nothing else — no incapacity management, no staged distributions. Where the house genuinely is the whole plan, that is enough, and LawDepot builds the deed where your state offers one.
Create a transfer on death deed
LawDepot pays us a commission if you buy through this link — it costs you nothing extra. We are not a law firm and this is not legal advice. Affiliate Disclosure.
What the TOD deed cannot do
Nothing while you are alive. If you lose capacity, a TOD deed provides no one to manage, refinance or sell the home — a trustee could; without a trust you are relying on a durable power of attorney or a court conservatorship. No plan B in many forms. If your beneficiary dies first and you never re-record, the house lands in probate anyway — the exact outcome you paid to avoid. No management for the young or unready. A deed hands an 19-year-old a house; a trust hands them a trustee.
What the trust cannot beat
Price, simplicity, and reversibility. A TOD deed is one recorded document, revocable by recording another, with no retitling, no trust-funding project, and no maintenance. The classic living-trust failure — the trust that was signed but never funded, so the house probates anyway — cannot happen to a deed that IS the recording. For a widowed parent with one paid-off house going to two adult kids, the deed is usually the honest answer, and plenty of attorneys will say so.
Costs side by side: what a living trust costs · estate planning costs overall. What the deed does and doesn’t fix: the probate question · the failure modes.