A transfer on death deed is not available in Rhode Island. The state has not adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act or any equivalent statute, so a deed naming a beneficiary who takes title automatically at the owner’s death has no legal effect here. Property owned solely in your name still passes through probate unless you use one of the alternatives Rhode Island does recognize: a revocable living trust, joint tenancy with right of survivorship, a standard life estate deed, or an enhanced life estate deed.
Why Rhode Island Doesn’t Allow TOD Deeds
The Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act has been enacted in 19 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, with more states adopting their own versions. Rhode Island is not on the list. A bill introducing the Uniform Act was filed in the Rhode Island legislature in 2025 but had not passed as of that session.
Without enabling legislation, a document labeled “transfer on death deed” would not override Rhode Island’s default rules. Solely owned property passes through probate, where the court supervises distribution under the will or, if there is no will, the state’s intestacy laws. Probate takes a minimum of six months because of the mandatory creditor claims window, and often longer for contested or complex estates. Avoiding that timeline is usually the reason people ask about TOD deeds in the first place.
Alternatives That Keep Real Estate Out of Probate
Four tools do the job a TOD deed would do in other states. Each involves a different trade-off between cost, control, and long-term flexibility.
Revocable Living Trust
A revocable living trust is the closest all-purpose substitute. You create the trust, name yourself as trustee, and record a new deed transferring the property from yourself individually to yourself as trustee. The trust technically owns the property, so at your death it passes to the beneficiary you named in the trust document without a probate filing. During your lifetime you keep full control: you can sell, refinance, change beneficiaries, or dissolve the trust entirely.
The drawback is cost. Creating and properly funding a trust typically runs from $1,000 to several thousand dollars in attorney fees. The trust document should be reviewed periodically to make sure it still reflects your wishes, and any property you forget to transfer into it still passes through probate. That last point defeats more trust plans than any other single mistake.
Joint Tenancy With Right of Survivorship
When one joint tenant dies, the surviving owner automatically takes full title. Rhode Island defaults to tenancy in common when property is deeded to two or more people, so the deed must state explicitly that the owners hold as joint tenants with right of survivorship.1Rhode Island General Assembly. Rhode Island Code 34-3-1 – Estates in Common and Joint Tenancy Without that language, each owner’s share passes through their own estate.
Joint tenancy is cheap and simple to set up, but the co-owner you add gets an immediate legal interest in the property. They could file a partition action to force a sale. Their creditors could place liens on their share. You cannot sell or refinance without their cooperation. For a married couple this is natural. For a parent adding an adult child, the risks are often underappreciated.
There is also a tax catch. When you add a co-owner by gift rather than sale, they take your original cost basis in the property instead of a stepped-up basis at your death. If they later sell, they could face a larger capital gains bill than if they had simply inherited the property outright.
Standard Life Estate Deed
A life estate deed splits ownership. You keep the right to live in and use the property for your lifetime, and a named remainderman automatically receives full ownership when you die. No probate is needed for the transfer.
The trade-off is a real loss of control. Once the deed is recorded, you generally cannot sell or mortgage the property without the remainderman’s signature, and you cannot undo the deed without their agreement. That works when relationships are stable. It becomes a serious problem when circumstances change.
Enhanced Life Estate (Lady Bird) Deed
Rhode Island recognizes enhanced life estate deeds, sometimes called Lady Bird deeds.2Cornell Law Institute. 210 RICR 50-00-6.9 – Life Estate With Enhanced Powers The structure looks like a standard life estate with one critical difference: you keep the power to sell, mortgage, revoke, or otherwise dispose of the property during your lifetime without the remainderman’s consent. Whatever you still own at death passes automatically to the remainderman, outside probate.
This is the closest functional equivalent to a TOD deed available in Rhode Island. It also comes with a Medicaid problem that has caught many families off guard.
The Medicaid Trap in Enhanced Life Estate Deeds
If you might ever need Medicaid to cover nursing home or long-term care costs, an enhanced life estate deed created after June 30, 2014, can disqualify you. Rhode Island treats a home held under an enhanced life estate deed as a countable resource rather than an exempt homestead, on the reasoning that the enhanced powers let you convert the property to cash at any time.3Rhode Island General Assembly. Rhode Island Code 40-8-3.1 – Life Estate With Enhanced Powers and Medicaid Eligibility The only way to restore eligibility is to convey all outstanding remainder interests back to yourself, which effectively undoes the deed.
Enhanced life estate deeds recorded on or before June 30, 2014, are grandfathered and do not trigger this disqualification. New ones do. And federal law requires states to seek recovery from a deceased Medicaid recipient’s estate for nursing facility services, home and community-based services, and related hospital and prescription drug costs when the recipient was 55 or older.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets Recovery cannot happen while a surviving spouse, a child under 21, or a blind or disabled child of any age is alive, but outside those protections the state will pursue reimbursement.
The result is that the tool that best mimics a TOD deed can also make the home a countable asset that must be spent down before Medicaid benefits begin. A standard life estate deed avoids this problem at the cost of flexibility. Anyone with even a remote possibility of needing Medicaid should get legal advice before choosing between the two.
Making the Alternative Actually Work
Every option here depends on getting a deed recorded correctly. Any deed transferring Rhode Island real estate must be in writing and recorded with the local land evidence records office to be enforceable against third parties.5Rhode Island General Assembly. Rhode Island Code 34-11-1 – Conveyances Required to Be in Writing and Recorded
- For a trust, the deed moving the property from you individually to you as trustee must be recorded. The trust document itself stays private.
- For joint tenancy, the deed must explicitly state joint tenancy with right of survivorship. Rhode Island presumes tenancy in common, so vague language destroys the survivorship feature.1Rhode Island General Assembly. Rhode Island Code 34-3-1 – Estates in Common and Joint Tenancy
- Life estate deeds, standard or enhanced, must be recorded to give public notice of the split between the life tenant and the remainderman.
The most common failure is not the deed itself but the conflict between documents. A will leaves the house to one person; the deed already names someone else as a joint tenant with right of survivorship. The deed wins. Joint tenancy, life estate deeds, and trust ownership all operate outside probate and override whatever the will says about the same property. A close second: a trust is drafted and signed, but the deed transferring the property into it is never recorded. The property stays in the owner’s individual name and passes through probate anyway, exactly the outcome the trust was meant to prevent.
Reviewing everything together every few years, and always after a divorce, remarriage, or the death of a named beneficiary, catches these problems while they are still fixable.
What Happens to a Mortgage When the Property Passes
Inheriting or receiving a home with a mortgage does not usually mean the lender can demand immediate repayment. The Garn-St. Germain Act prohibits lenders from enforcing a due-on-sale clause when residential property with fewer than five units transfers to a relative because of the borrower’s death, or when a joint tenant or tenant by the entirety takes full title through survivorship.6GovInfo. 12 USC 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions Transfers into the borrower’s own living trust are also protected, as long as the borrower remains a beneficiary.
The person receiving the property can keep making payments under the original loan terms without refinancing. The lender cannot accelerate the loan, raise the interest rate, or demand a new application because the borrower died. This protection applies regardless of which method moves the property, whether through a trust, joint tenancy, a life estate deed, or even probate itself.