Colorado Beneficiary Deed Statute: Requirements, Recording, and Revocation

A Colorado beneficiary deed lets a property owner name who should inherit their real estate and have it pass directly to that person at death, outside of probate. The owner signs the deed, has it notarized, and records it with the county clerk and recorder where the property sits. The named beneficiary gets nothing while the owner is alive, and the owner can cancel or change the deed at any time. The rules sit in C.R.S. 15-15-401 through 15-15-415.

What the Deed Actually Does

A beneficiary deed is a revocable transfer that only takes effect when you die. Until then, the beneficiary has no legal interest in the property. You can sell it, refinance it, lease it, or leave it empty without asking the beneficiary and without telling them the deed exists.¹ No payment or exchange has to pass between you and the beneficiary for the deed to be valid.

Because the property moves outside probate, the beneficiary generally does not need court involvement to take ownership. The statutory form itself cautions that executing a beneficiary deed may not avoid probate in every case, since creditor claims and other complications can still pull the property back into the process.²

What the Deed Must Contain

Colorado’s requirements are specific but short:

Transfer-on-death language. The deed must say “conveys on death” or “transfers on death,” or use other wording that clearly shows the transfer happens at the owner’s death.²
The owner’s signature. Only the current owner (the grantor) signs. The beneficiary’s signature, consent, or awareness is not required.¹
Notarization. The signature has to be acknowledged before a notary public.
The full legal description of the property, not just the street address. Pull it from your existing deed or the county assessor’s records.
The name and address of the grantee-beneficiary.

The statutory form also lets you name a successor beneficiary who inherits if your primary beneficiary dies before you. Using that option is a cheap way to avoid a serious problem described below.²

Recording Is the Step That Makes It Real

The deed has to be recorded with the county clerk and recorder in the county where the property is located, and it has to be recorded before the owner dies. An unrecorded beneficiary deed does nothing. The statutory form says so in bold capital letters.²

You submit the notarized deed to the county clerk and recorder with the filing fee. Fees vary by county and are generally modest for a single-page document. Call the clerk’s office for the exact amount and any formatting rules they apply. Once recorded, the deed enters the public property records.

Changing or Canceling the Deed

You can revoke or replace a beneficiary deed at any point before death, for any reason, without telling the beneficiary.³ There are two ways to do it:

Record a revocation. You sign and record a document that identifies the property and states that you are revoking the beneficiary deed. Colorado has a short statutory form for this.
Record a new beneficiary deed. A later beneficiary deed automatically cancels any earlier beneficiary deed on the same property, even if the new one only covers part of your interest.³

Either way, the revocation or replacement must be recorded in the right county before the owner dies. If multiple deeds and revocations are on file, the most recently executed one controls, regardless of the order they were recorded.³

Your Will Cannot Override It

Colorado law expressly states that a beneficiary deed cannot be revoked, altered, or amended by anything in a will.³ If your will leaves the house to your daughter but your recorded beneficiary deed names your son, the son gets the property. Changing the will accomplishes nothing. To change the outcome, record a new beneficiary deed or a revocation.

After a Divorce

If you named a spouse and later divorce, do not assume the designation disappears on its own. Record a revocation or a new beneficiary deed naming whoever you now intend to receive the property.

If the Beneficiary Dies Before You

Colorado’s anti-lapse statutes do not apply to beneficiary deeds. If you named one beneficiary and that person dies before you, the deed fails. The property then passes under your will or, with no will, under Colorado’s intestacy laws, which can push it into the probate process you were trying to avoid.⁴

If you named more than one beneficiary and one of them dies before you, that person’s share is split proportionately among the surviving beneficiaries unless the deed says otherwise.⁴ Naming a successor beneficiary using the optional language in the statutory form is the simplest guard against the single-beneficiary failure.

If You Co-Own the Property

A joint tenant with right of survivorship can record a beneficiary deed, but it only takes effect if you are the last surviving joint tenant. If you die first, the surviving joint tenant inherits your interest through the right of survivorship and the beneficiary deed has no effect. Recording the deed does not sever the joint tenancy, and the named beneficiary does not become a joint tenant with the surviving owners.⁵ Think of it as a contingency plan that only matters if you outlive your co-owners.

What the Beneficiary Does After the Owner Dies

Ownership vests in the beneficiary automatically by operation of law when the owner dies.⁴ To clear the title records, the beneficiary should record the owner’s death certificate together with a supplementary affidavit in the county where the property sits. The affidavit must include the legal description of the property and confirm that the person named in the death certificate is the same person who signed the beneficiary deed.⁶

Skipping this step won’t void the ownership, but it will create problems whenever the beneficiary tries to sell, refinance, or insure the property.

Debts, Liens, and Medicaid Recovery

A beneficiary deed does not clean the property up. The beneficiary takes it subject to every existing mortgage, lien, easement, lease, and other encumbrance that affected the property during the owner’s lifetime, whether those interests were created before or after the beneficiary deed was recorded.⁴

Creditors and other interest holders whose claims are not already recorded have four months from the owner’s death to record evidence or notice of their interest. If they miss that window, they are permanently barred from asserting the interest against anyone who doesn’t already know about it.⁴

The property is also subject to any claim by the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing for recovery of Medicaid payments. The statutory form warns that recording a beneficiary deed may disqualify the owner from Medicaid eligibility or make the property reachable for Medicaid recovery after death.² Anyone currently on Medicaid or likely to need it should get advice before signing.

Naming a Minor

You can name a minor as the beneficiary, but a child cannot manage real estate alone. Naming a minor without a plan for property management may force a court to appoint a conservator, which adds the cost and oversight you were trying to avoid.

Common fixes include naming an adult custodian under Colorado’s Uniform Transfers to Minors Act, setting up a trust for the child and naming the trust as the beneficiary, or using your will to designate a property guardian. Under Colorado’s UTMA, a custodianship typically lasts until the beneficiary turns 21, with the custodian managing the real estate for the child’s benefit until then.

Limits Worth Knowing Before You Rely on One

Beneficiary deeds cover real estate only. Bank accounts, investment accounts, vehicles, and personal property have to be handled through other tools: wills, trusts, or payable-on-death designations. Treating the beneficiary deed as a full estate plan is a common and expensive mistake, because any asset without its own transfer-on-death mechanism can still end up in probate.

The deed carries no warranties of title unless the owner specifically adds them. Under Colorado law it has the same force as a bargain and sale deed, so the beneficiary gets whatever interest the owner actually had, with no guarantee the title is clean.² If title problems surface later, the beneficiary bears the risk.

Family disputes also remain a real risk when the beneficiary deed conflicts with what a will says or what relatives expected. Because the recorded beneficiary deed controls over the will for the property it covers, relatives who expected something different can feel blindsided. Telling people what you’ve done, during your lifetime, is cheaper than the alternative.

Tax Treatment

Property transferred by a beneficiary deed qualifies for a step-up in tax basis. Under federal law, the beneficiary’s cost basis resets to the property’s fair market value on the date the owner died, rather than what the owner originally paid.⁷ That reduces capital gains tax if the beneficiary later sells.

The property remains part of the owner’s taxable estate for federal estate tax purposes. For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual, so estates below that threshold owe no federal estate tax.⁸ Colorado does not currently impose a state estate tax; it was effectively eliminated for individuals who died after December 31, 2004, when federal changes removed the state death tax credit that funded it.⁹ If the federal credit were ever restored, a Colorado estate tax could return.

1
Justia. Colorado Code 15-15-402 – Real Property
2
Justia. Colorado Code 15-15-404 – Beneficiary Deed Form
3
Justia. Colorado Code 15-15-405 – Revocation, Change, Revocation by Will Prohibited
4
Justia. Colorado Code 15-15-407 – Vesting of Ownership in Grantee-Beneficiary
5
Justia. Colorado Code 15-15-408 – Joint Tenancy
6
Justia. Colorado Code 38-31-102 – Proof of Death
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 1014 – Basis of Property Acquired From a Decedent
8
Internal Revenue Service. What’s New — Estate and Gift Tax
9
Colorado General Assembly. Estate Tax