What to Do When Someone Dies in Harford County, Maryland

Recording fees

baseRecordingFee of $60.00 is the all-in cost to record a typical deed of 9 pages or less: $20.00 recording fee (Md. Code, Real Property § 3-601(a)(2)(ii)) + $40.00 statewide surcharge on every recordable instrument (Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 13-604(a)(2)). An instrument of 10 pages or more (other than one solely involving a principal residence, which is $20 regardless of length) is $75.00 + $40.00 surcharge = $115.00. A release of 9 pages or less is $10.00 + surcharge. The Clerks' fee schedules add $5.00 per page for plats of any kind (a Clerk fee-schedule item, not a § 3-601 fee). There is no per-page fee for deeds. TRIPLE FEE FOR NON-CONFORMING DOCUMENTS: since October 1, 2025 (2025 Md. Laws ch. 65 / HB 347), Md. Code, Real Property § 3-104(e)(1)(i) requires every recorded instrument to "Include at least a 3-inch margin at the top of the first page and 1-inch margins on the left and right sides of each page of the instrument for official use," printed in "not less than 8 point type and in black letters ... on white paper," on pages no larger than 8 1/2 x 14 inches (§ 3-601(a)(1)); "The recording charge for any instrument not conforming to these requirements shall be three times the normal amount charged." State recordation tax is collected by the Clerk at recording in most counties, but is paid to the county treasurer before presentation in some (e.g., Frederick, whose Clerk fee page states that "Except for State Recordation Taxes, all recording fees, surcharges, and transfer taxes are collected by the Clerk of the Circuit Court at the time of recording").

Md. Code, Real Property § 3-601(a)(2) (recording fee); Md. Code, Cts. & Jud. Proc. § 13-604(a)(2) ($40 surcharge)

Transfer tax

State recordation tax: no single statewide rate. Rates "are applied to each $500 or fraction of $500 of consideration payable or of the principal amount of the debt secured for an instrument of writing" (Md. Code, Tax-Property § 12-103(a)(1)), and "The Mayor and City Council of Baltimore City or the governing body of a county may set, by law, the recordation tax rate in the county" (§ 12-103(b)(1)) — so the rate is set at the COUNTY level and varies by jurisdiction (Frederick County, for example, publishes $7.00 per $500). State transfer tax: "the rate of the transfer tax is 0.5% of the consideration payable for the instrument of writing" (§ 13-203(a)(1)); a first-time Maryland home buyer rate of 0.25% applies and "shall be paid entirely by the seller" (§ 13-203(b)(3)). Absent a contrary agreement, recordation tax and State or local transfer tax are "shared equally between the grantor and grantee" (Md. Code, Real Property § 14-104(b)). — Verified 2026-09-05 State; Each county and Baltimore City sets its own recordation tax rate (Md. Code, Tax-Property § 12-103(b)(1)) and may impose a county transfer tax in addition to the 0.5% state transfer tax. The county transfer tax is not rated anywhere in the Tax-Property article: § 13-402(a) provides that "This subtitle applies in any county where the county imposes a transfer tax," and § 13-402(b) that "The provisions of this subtitle are in addition to the public local laws of a county that relate to transfer taxes" — so both its existence and its rate come from each county's own public local law. Both taxes therefore vary by jurisdiction; do not assume a single rate. Confirm the current rate with the county before recording. STRUCTURAL LIMITATION: this dataset cannot express that variation — `TransferTaxInfo` carries only free-text `stateRate`/`localRate` strings, and all 24 Maryland records share this one `MD_RECORDING_FEES` object, so there is exactly one transfer-tax description for the whole state. Per-county recordation and transfer tax RATES are deliberately not encoded here rather than being encoded wrongly. local. Transfer-on-death deeds are generally exempt (STATUTORY, and NOT YET IN FORCE. Maryland has no operative real-property TOD deed as of 2026-07-13: the Maryland Transfer-on-Death Deed Act (2026 Md. Laws ch. 751 / ch. 750; HB 738 / SB 651), codified at Md. Code, Real Property Article, Title 14, Subtitle 10, takes effect October 1, 2026. Once effective, the exemption is by statute rather than by any "no consideration" theory: Md. Code, Tax-Property § 12-108(ii) (added by ch. 751) provides that "A REAL PROPERTY TRANSFER-ON-DEATH DEED UNDER TITLE 14 OF THE REAL PROPERTY ARTICLE IS NOT SUBJECT TO RECORDATION TAX IF THE PROPERTY IS A PRIMARY RESIDENCE OR A SECONDARY RESIDENCE OF THE TRANSFEROR" — note the residence CONDITION, so the exemption is not unconditional. Tax-Property § 13-207(a)(27) extends the exemption to the state transfer tax, and § 13-414 provides that an instrument exempt under § 12-108(ii) "IS NOT SUBJECT TO COUNTY TRANSFER TAX." The Clerk recording fee and the $40 surcharge still apply.). WHO PAYS (default): Md. Code, Real Property § 14-104(b) — "in every written or oral agreement for the sale or other disposition of property, it is presumed in the absence of a contrary provision in the agreement or the law, that the parties to the agreement intended that the cost of any recordation tax or any State or local transfer tax shall be shared equally between the grantor and grantee. This section does not apply to mortgages or deeds of trust." For a first-time Maryland home buyer occupying improved residential property as a principal residence, § 14-104(c)(1)-(2) shift "the entire amount of recordation tax and local transfer tax" and "the entire amount of State transfer tax" onto the seller. NO CONSIDERATION: both taxes are measured on consideration (§ 12-103(a)(1); § 13-203(a)(1)), and consideration "includes the amount of any mortgage or deed of trust assumed by the grantee" (§ 12-103(a)(2)(i)) — so an assumed mortgage is taxable even in an otherwise gift transfer. Maryland also imposes an agricultural land transfer tax (Md. Code, Tax-Property § 13-301 et seq.) in some jurisdictions; property zoned agricultural is routed through the local SDAT office before recording. UNVERIFIED this pass: the individual § 12-108 recordation-tax exemption paragraphs and the § 13-301 agricultural transfer tax were not re-fetched item by item — only the enabling and rate sections above were. — Verified 2026-09-05