A Colorado quitclaim deed transfers whatever ownership interest the grantor holds in a piece of real property, and nothing more. It makes no promise that the title is clean, that the grantor actually owns the property, or that there aren’t liens attached. People use it most often to move property between spouses, settle a divorce, add or remove a family member from title, or move a home into a living trust. The form is short and the signing is simple. The risks live in what the deed doesn’t do.
What a Quitclaim Deed Actually Transfers
A quitclaim deed passes only what the grantor owns at the moment of signing. Full fee simple title in, full fee simple title out. Nothing owned, nothing conveyed. There is no warranty and no recourse against the grantor if the title turns out to be defective.
Colorado’s statutory short form matters here. A deed that uses the word “quitclaim” in place of “convey” and omits warranty language is a quitclaim deed. A deed that uses “convey” without warranty language becomes a bargain and sale deed, which passes after-acquired title. A quitclaim does not. If the grantor later clears up a defect or inherits the rest of the ownership interest, the grantee gets no benefit from it.1Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-30-113 – Short Form
Several specific situations trip people up:
- If the grantor is one of several joint tenants, the deed transfers only that grantor’s share and severs the joint tenancy as to that share, turning it into a tenancy in common. The remaining joint tenants lose their right of survivorship for the piece that was transferred.
- A quitclaim deed cannot cut off an existing life estate. The grantee’s full rights don’t begin until the life tenant dies.
- Because there are no warranties, title companies often scrutinize these transfers heavily. Selling or refinancing later can require extra title work, and in some cases a quiet title lawsuit in district court, which typically runs several thousand dollars in attorney fees and takes months.
Making the Deed Valid
The deed must name the grantor and grantee with addresses, state the consideration (even a nominal “ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration” is enough), and include the full legal description of the property. A street address alone will not do. If the legal description conflicts with a street address or assessor parcel number on the document, the legal description controls.2Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-122 – Inclusion of Street Address and Assessor Information With Legal Description You can pull the legal description from a prior deed, a title commitment, or county assessor records. Mistakes in the description are one of the fastest ways to generate a title defect that only a court can fix.
The grantor has to be at least 18 and mentally competent. Colorado treats anyone 18 or over as fully capable of making a binding real property transfer.3Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 13-22-101 – Competence of Persons Eighteen Years of Age Every person on title must sign. A quitclaim signed by one of two owners transfers only that owner’s share.
Every quitclaim deed must be acknowledged before a notary public. The county clerk will reject the document for recording without proper notarization.4Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-103 – Acknowledgment Before Notary Only the grantor’s signature needs the notary. The grantee doesn’t sign.
Signing and notarizing alone don’t finish the job. The grantor also has to deliver the deed to the grantee with the intent that it take effect right away. A signed deed sitting in a drawer under the grantor’s control hasn’t been delivered, even if the grantor talked about it. Handing the deed directly to the grantee works. So does leaving it with an attorney or escrow agent under instructions to release it. If the transfer is ever challenged, courts look at the surrounding behavior: who paid property taxes afterward, who paid the utilities, whether the grantor started acting like a tenant or a stranger to the property.
Recording the Deed and the Fees Involved
Colorado is a race-notice state. An unrecorded deed loses to a later buyer or lender who records first without knowing about the earlier transfer.5Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-109 The deed is valid between the grantor and grantee without recording, but skipping recording exposes the grantee to a second sale by the grantor or a judgment lien recorded against the grantor’s name.
Record the deed at the clerk and recorder’s office in the county where the property sits. Colorado charges a flat $40 recording fee per document, replacing the earlier per-page fee structure.6Colorado General Assembly. HB24-1269 Modification of Recording Fees
Colorado also imposes a documentary fee of one cent per $100 of consideration. No documentary fee applies if the consideration is $500 or less.7Pueblo County Government. Fee Schedule On a $400,000 transfer, the documentary fee is $40. Many family quitclaim transfers involve no money changing hands, which means no documentary fee is owed. Certain transfers are exempt from the documentary fee entirely, and the exemption has to be claimed when the deed is presented for recording.8Justia. Colorado Code 39-13-104 – Exemptions
County assessors use a form called the TD-1000 (Real Property Transfer Declaration) to track sales that may not reflect market value. Family transfers and divorce settlements are exactly the kind of transactions this form flags, so the assessor doesn’t use a below-market price to recalibrate the whole neighborhood. Filing the TD-1000 with the county assessor when you record the deed heads off confusion later.
The Mortgage Doesn’t Go Anywhere
A quitclaim deed transfers title. It does not transfer, modify, or satisfy a mortgage. The original borrower stays fully on the hook. If the new owner misses payments, the credit damage lands on the person who signed the loan. This is the single most common place quitclaim transactions between family members go wrong: the grantor thinks they’re done with the property, and the lender sees nothing of the sort.
Most mortgages carry a due-on-sale clause that lets the lender demand full repayment when the borrower transfers the property without consent. Lenders don’t always enforce it, but they can, and enforcement can mean foreclosure.
Federal law blocks lenders from enforcing due-on-sale clauses on residential properties with fewer than five units in several common situations:
- Transfers to the borrower’s spouse or children
- Transfers from a divorce, legal separation, or property settlement agreement where the borrower’s spouse becomes an owner
- Transfers into a living trust where the borrower stays a beneficiary and keeps occupancy rights
- Transfers after a borrower’s death to a relative or through joint tenancy
These cover a lot of ordinary quitclaim situations, but not all of them. Transferring to a non-relative, a business entity, or a child’s spouse falls outside the protection.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 U.S. Code 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions
Liens and Encumbrances Follow the Property
A quitclaim deed clears nothing. Every lien, easement, and restriction attached to the property before the transfer stays attached after it. The grantee takes all of it.
Watch for unpaid property taxes, outstanding mortgages, judgment liens from lawsuits against the grantor, and mechanic’s liens from unpaid contractors. Tax liens are the most dangerous because they outrank nearly every other claim, and delinquent property taxes can lead to a tax sale regardless of who currently holds title.
Easements and covenants carry over too. A utility easement for power lines, a shared driveway right, HOA covenants on construction. In Colorado, an HOA’s lien for unpaid assessments has statutory priority over most other liens, including a first mortgage, for up to six months of delinquent assessments.10Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-33-3-316 – Lien for Assessments
A title search before accepting a quitclaim is cheap insurance. The cost is minor compared to finding out later that the property carries a $50,000 judgment lien.
Taxes
Federal Gift Tax
When property moves by quitclaim for less than fair market value, the IRS treats the difference as a gift.11Internal Revenue Service. Gift Tax In 2026, you can give up to $19,000 per recipient per year with no reporting requirement. Larger gifts must be reported on IRS Form 709 but don’t necessarily produce tax owed. The lifetime gift and estate tax exemption for 2026 is $15,000,000, raised by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act signed on July 4, 2025.12Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax Most people never pay federal gift tax, but missing a required Form 709 filing creates headaches with the IRS and complicates later estate administration.
Transfers between spouses are generally exempt from gift tax regardless of value, and transfers incident to a divorce are typically not treated as gifts.
Property Tax
Colorado doesn’t reassess property values whenever ownership changes. Reappraisals run on a statutory cycle, with data collection in odd-numbered years. A quitclaim transfer by itself doesn’t trigger a reassessment or an increase in property taxes. The assessor will update the ownership record and will use the TD-1000 to understand what kind of transaction it was.
Medicaid Look-Back
Transferring property by quitclaim for less than fair market value can wreck Medicaid long-term care eligibility. Federal law applies a 60-month look-back: if you gave away property within five years before applying for Medicaid nursing home coverage, Medicaid presumes the transfer was made to qualify and imposes a penalty period of ineligibility. The length is figured by dividing the value transferred by the average monthly cost of nursing facility care in the state.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets
Some transfers are exempt from the penalty. You can transfer a home to a spouse, a child under 21, a blind or permanently disabled child, or a sibling who already co-owns the home and has lived there at least a year. Transfers to an adult child who lived in the home for at least two years before the owner entered a nursing facility and provided care that delayed institutional placement are also protected. Outside those categories, a transfer during the look-back window can create months or years of ineligibility at a time when Colorado nursing home care often runs more than $10,000 a month.
When to Bring in an Attorney
A quitclaim between spouses or into a living trust is usually straightforward. The complications pile up fast when there’s an active mortgage, multiple co-owners who don’t agree, a probate estate, or any Medicaid planning in the picture. An attorney will catch things a form template won’t, like a legal description that doesn’t match assessor records or a transfer that quietly severs a joint tenancy you meant to preserve.
Title insurance is a related concern. Title companies are often cautious about insuring property that came through a quitclaim deed, and some will decline until a waiting period passes or a quiet title action is completed. If selling or refinancing is on the horizon, cleaning up title questions before you need to is far cheaper than doing it under a buyer’s or lender’s deadline.