By, Shaina Case
For many people, the highest value asset of their estate is their home. While whether a will or trust centered plan is right for someone varies greatly depending on each person’s goals, assets, and individual situation, Wyoming’s transfer on death deed can be a useful and special estate planning tool to help avoid probate.
Relatively new (enacted in 2013), the transfer on death deed, also known as a beneficiary deed, is prepared and then recorded in the real property records during the Owner’s lifetime (the Owner is the person who executes the deed to convey title). However, the transfer of title only occurs upon the Owner’s death. So, for example, let’s say that the Owners, a married couple, want to leave their home to their adult son, the Grantee Beneficiary (the Grantee Beneficiary is the person or persons to whom the Owner grants an interest in the real property). The married couple can sign a transfer on death deed that says, in effect, upon the last of them to die, their home shall be conveyed to their son. Because, in this example, the transfer on death has no effect until both Owners have passed, the Owners retain control to sell or mortgage the home or revoke the deed without their son’s consent or agreement.
The transfer on death deed therefore greatly simplifies estate administration upon the Owners’ death and helps avoid going through the probate process (the process includes, for example, having to get home valued, opening a court proceeding, and publishing the proceeding in the newspaper—all of which takes time and is expensive) to transfer title of the house to a beneficiary.
Please see your estate planning attorney to determine whether the transfer on death deed is one of the right tools for you.