Deed
The recorded document that says who owns a piece of real property, and how they hold it.
What it means
A deed moves ownership. It is not proof of ownership on its own and it is not the same as a title, which is the legal state of owning something rather than a piece of paper.
Deeds differ in what the person signing promises. A warranty deed promises the title is good; a quitclaim deed promises nothing at all and simply hands over whatever the signer had, which may be nothing.
A deed is the instrument by which an interest in land moves from one person to another, and the copy that matters is the one recorded with the county where the land sits. It names the owners, and it usually says how they hold it together — as joint tenants with a right of survivorship, as tenants in common, as tenants by the entirety — and that phrase decides what happens on a death more often than the will does.
A will can direct who should receive a house. It does not itself change the deed. The change happens through probate, or through a non-probate mechanism the state provides, and until it happens the record still shows the person who died.
Getting a copy is ordinarily routine: the county recorder, clerk or registry of deeds holds it, most of them index by owner name, and many publish it online. It is the first document to read and the one families most often have never seen.
Why it matters
A deed usually only has effect against the rest of the world once it is recorded, so a signed deed in a drawer can leave a family exposed.
Choosing the wrong kind is a common and expensive mistake: a quitclaim between family members can defeat title insurance and complicate a later sale.
Almost every question about an inherited house — who can sell it, who can borrow against it, who owes the taxes, who has to agree — is answered by the deed before it is answered by anything else.
Families routinely act on what they were told the arrangement was, and the record says something different.
When you are likely to meet it
- When a house has to be moved out of a deceased person's name.
- When a personal representative is told they need to execute a deed to distribute real estate.
- When somebody suggests adding a child to the deed.
- When somebody dies owning a home.
- When a plan depends on who owns the house and nobody has checked.
- When adding or removing a name is proposed as a way to keep things simple.
How this varies by state
What forms of co-ownership a deed can create, what words are needed to create a right of survivorship, and where and how a deed is recorded are all state law, and the recording office is usually a county one.