Texas TODD: Requirements, Recording, and Revocation

A Texas transfer on death deed lets you name someone to inherit your real property when you die, with no probate case afterward. You sign the deed, have it notarized, and record it with the clerk in the county where the property sits — all before your death. While you’re alive the deed does nothing: you keep full ownership and can sell, refinance, or change your mind at any time.¹ The beneficiary doesn’t have to know the deed exists, agree to it, or pay anything for it.²

Who Can Use One and What Property It Covers

Any individual who owns an interest in Texas real property can create a TODD and name one or more beneficiaries.¹ It works for a house, raw land, farm acreage, commercial parcels, or a vacant lot. You can send the whole property to one person or divide it among several.

You can only transfer the interest you actually own. If you and your spouse hold property as community property, your deed covers your half; your spouse’s half stays with your spouse. When both of you want the property to go to the same person, both of you need to sign, either on the same deed or on separate deeds covering each interest. The owner has to sign personally. A power of attorney cannot be used to sign a TODD on someone else’s behalf.

What Goes in the Deed

A valid TODD identifies the owner, the beneficiary, and the exact property. You’ll need:

The full legal name and mailing address of every person currently on the title.
The full legal name and mailing address of each beneficiary.
The legal description of the property, pulled from your current deed or the county deed records. A lot-and-block description is typical for subdivisions; rural tracts usually use metes and bounds. Do not use the description from your tax statement, which is often inaccurate.

Texas offers an optional statutory form in Estates Code Chapter 114, and most county clerks keep blank forms on hand. Whatever form you start with, match the owner names and property description to your current deed exactly. A typo in a name or a wrong lot number can cause title problems later that are costly to clean up.

Signing, Notarizing, and Recording

Three things make the deed effective: it has to contain the usual elements of a recordable deed, it has to state that the transfer happens at the owner’s death, and it has to be recorded in the county where the property is located before the owner dies.³ Miss any one of those and the deed is void.

The owner signs in front of a notary public, who verifies identity and applies an official seal. Without notarization the county clerk will refuse to record it.

Recording before death is the requirement that trips people up most. A signed, notarized TODD left in a drawer at your death is worthless. The property goes through probate as if the deed never existed. There is no grace period and no way to cure it after the fact.

Where to File and What It Costs

Take the notarized deed to the county clerk’s office in the county where the property sits. You can file in person or mail it in, usually by certified mail. The clerk scans the document, assigns a file number, and returns the original with a recording stamp showing where it lives in the public records. Keep that stamped original somewhere safe; it is your proof the deed is on file.

Texas statute sets a base recording fee of $5 for the first page and $4 for each page after that, with counties adding records management and archive fees on top.⁴ In practice most counties collect around $25 to $30 for the first page and about $4 for each additional page. Call the clerk’s office to confirm.

Changing Your Mind: Revoking or Replacing the Deed

You can cancel or change a TODD any time while you’re alive. The most recently recorded valid instrument controls. Three ways to do it:

Record a new TODD. A later deed naming a different beneficiary, or expressly revoking the earlier one, replaces it.
Record a separate instrument of revocation. It needs to be signed, notarized, and filed in the same county as the original.
Sell or otherwise transfer the property during your lifetime. Once you no longer own it, the TODD has nothing to act on.⁵

A will cannot revoke or override a recorded TODD. The statute says so expressly.⁵ If your will leaves the house to one person and your TODD names another, the TODD wins. People get caught by this when they rewrite a will years later and assume it covers everything.

Divorce

If you named your spouse as the beneficiary and later divorce, the divorce judgment revokes the deed as to your ex-spouse, but only if a notice of that judgment is recorded in the county deed records before you die.⁵ Recording the notice is the step most people miss. If no one records it, the automatic revocation may not take effect and a title dispute can follow.

Joint Owners

When several owners create a TODD together, one owner’s revocation only cancels the deed as to that owner’s interest. The other owners’ shares remain covered. For property held with a right of survivorship, all living joint owners have to agree in order to revoke the deed.⁵

What Happens When You Die

The beneficiary has to outlive you by at least 120 hours — five full days — to inherit through the TODD.⁶ This handles the case where both of you die in the same accident. If the beneficiary doesn’t survive that long, their share lapses and passes under the same rules that apply to a failed gift in a will.

If the deed names more than one beneficiary without specifying shares, each one takes an equal undivided interest with no right of survivorship.⁶ Want a 60/40 split, or want one beneficiary’s share to pass to another if one dies first? Spell it out in the deed. Otherwise the default rules take over.

To actually put the property in their name, the beneficiary usually records an affidavit of death along with a certified copy of your death certificate in the same county. That creates a clean chain of title. No court is involved — that is the point of a TODD — but the paperwork still has to be filed.

Debts, Mortgages, and Taxes the Beneficiary Takes On

Property passing through a TODD is not part of your probate estate, but it is not fully protected from your debts either. If your probate estate can’t cover your debts, taxes, and administrative costs, the personal representative can reach the TODD property to make up the shortfall, treating it as though it had been in the estate. If the representative doesn’t act within 90 days of a payment demand, creditors and other interested parties can bring the claim themselves. Any enforcement action has to be filed within two years of your death.⁷

There is one specific protection: property transferred by a TODD is not subject to the Texas Medicaid Estate Recovery Program under Government Code Section 531.077.⁷ For families dealing with long-term care costs, that is one of the biggest reasons to use a TODD instead of letting the property fall into the probate estate.

Any mortgage or lien on the property stays attached to it. The loan does not disappear at death; the beneficiary has to keep making payments to hold onto the property. Federal law generally stops lenders from accelerating a loan when property passes to a close relative at the borrower’s death, which protects transfers to a spouse or child under the Garn-St. Germain Act.⁸ For beneficiaries outside the family, that protection is narrower, so checking with the lender first is worth the call.

On the tax side, property passed through a TODD gets a stepped-up basis, the same as property inherited through a will. The beneficiary’s basis becomes the fair market value on the date of your death rather than what you originally paid.⁹ A parent who bought a house for $80,000 that is worth $350,000 at death leaves the beneficiary with a basis of $350,000. A sale the next month at $355,000 produces only $5,000 of taxable gain. Gifting the same property during your lifetime would carry over your original basis, and the recipient would owe tax on decades of appreciation when they sell.

1
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.051 – Transfer on Death Deed Authorized
2
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.056 – Notice, Delivery, Acceptance, or Consideration Not Required
3
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.055 – Requirements
4
State of Texas. Texas Local Government Code 118.011 – Fee Schedule
5
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.057 – Revocation by Certain Instruments; Effect of Will or Marriage Dissolution
6
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.103 – Effect of Transfer on Death Deed at Transferors Death
7
State of Texas. Texas Estates Code 114.106 – Liability for Creditor Claims; Allowances in Lieu of Exempt Property and Family Allowances
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 USC 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions
9
Internal Revenue Service. Gifts and Inheritances