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: yes — for that one property. A properly recorded TOD deed passes the home outside probate entirely: no court, no personal-representative commission on it, no months of waiting. What it does NOT do is keep the rest of the estate out of probate, and it un-avoids probate instantly if the beneficiary situation fails (predecease with no contingent, simultaneous death, a beneficiary who disclaims).
What that is actually worth in dollars
In statutory-fee states the savings are computable. A $500,000 California house that passes by TOD deed avoids being counted in the probate estate — which would otherwise generate $13,000 of executor compensation and $13,000 of attorney fees under the statutory schedules, before costs. Run your own state: probate cost by state and the executor fee calculator (the deed shrinks the base both are computed on).
For that asset, and only that asset
The deed keeps the house out of probate and leaves everything else exactly where it was, which is why it works alongside a will rather than instead of one. Where your state offers the deed, LawDepot builds one.
Create a transfer on death deed
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The rest of the estate still needs an answer
Bank and brokerage accounts want POD/TOD designations; retirement accounts and life insurance already pass by beneficiary; what is left — cars, personal property, the odd account nobody titled — may fit your state’s small-estate procedures, which is the poor man’s complete probate avoidance: TOD deed for the house, designations for the accounts, small-estate affidavit for the remainder. When that assembly gets complicated, the one-document answer is the living trust comparison.
In the states whose small-estate route cannot touch real property, this deed is the workaround — which states need one most.