Free Lady Bird Deed

Prepare a Lady Bird deed: keep your home for life with the power to sell, and name who takes it at your death. PDF.

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Select the state where the property is located. The deed is prepared to that state's rule.

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A deed that conveys real property to a named grantee while the owner keeps a life estate and the power to sell, convey or mortgage the whole property during life without the grantee's consent. If the owner has not conveyed the property, the grantee holds it at the owner's death, free of the life estate. It is also called an enhanced life estate deed.

In the reserved powers. An ordinary life tenant cannot convey the fee without the remainderman; the owner under a Lady Bird deed can, and can divest the grantee by conveying the property during life. The grantee's remainder is therefore subject to the owner's powers until the owner's death.

A transfer on death deed is a statutory instrument that names a beneficiary and takes effect only at death, under the statute that creates it. A Lady Bird deed is a present conveyance under ordinary conveyancing law, with the owner reserving a life estate and powers. Where a state provides a transfer on death deed, each state page states which instruments the state recognizes.

This tool prepares the deed in Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont: Vermont, Maryland and Rhode Island recognize it by statute, Florida and Michigan through the state bar's title standards, and Texas through court decisions. Elsewhere the statutes and title standards were read and hold no such deed; those state pages route to the transfer on death deed assessment.

As a deed: signed by the owner, acknowledged before a notary public or other authorized officer, with subscribing witnesses where the state's conveyancing statute requires them, and recorded with the county recording office where the land lies. Each state page states the signing rule, the recording office and the transfer-tax rule from the state's own authority.

What a Lady Bird Deed Does

A Lady Bird deed, also called an enhanced life estate deed, conveys real property to a named grantee while the owner keeps a life estate and the power to sell, convey or mortgage the whole property during life without the grantee's consent. If the owner has not conveyed the property, the grantee holds it in fee simple at the owner's death, free of the life estate, without a probate proceeding.

It differs from an ordinary life estate deed in the reserved powers: an ordinary life tenant cannot convey the fee without the remainderman, and a Lady Bird deed's owner can. It differs from a transfer on death deed in that the grantee is named in a deed that conveys now, under conveyancing law, rather than in an instrument a statute makes effective only at death.

Six states recognize the deed: Vermont, Maryland and Rhode Island by statute, Florida and Michigan through the state bar's title standards, and Texas through court decisions. Elsewhere the statutes and title standards hold no such deed, and the transfer on death deed is the state's instrument where one exists.

Select your state to prepare the deed in the words the authority that recognizes it uses, laid out to the state's recording statute, with the recording office and the transfer-tax rule alongside.

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Select your state to prepare the deed in the words the authority that recognizes it uses, laid out to the state's recording statute, with the recording office and the transfer-tax rule alongside.

Free Lady Bird Deed

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