Transfer on Death Deed in Maine: Beneficiaries, Revocation, Taxes

A transfer on death deed in Maine lets you name someone to inherit your real estate the moment you die, without the property passing through probate. You sign the deed, get it notarized, and record it in the county registry of deeds where the property sits. Until you die, the deed does nothing: you keep full ownership, full control, and the beneficiary has no legal interest in the property at all.

Maine adopted this tool under the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act, and it works well for people whose main estate planning goal is passing a house to a specific person without a court proceeding. It has real limits, though, especially around spouses, creditors, and Medicaid.

What the Deed Does While You’re Alive

Nothing, essentially. Maine law is explicit: during your lifetime, a recorded transfer on death deed does not affect your rights as owner, does not create any legal or equitable interest for the beneficiary, and does not give the beneficiary’s creditors any claim against the property.¹ You can sell the property, refinance it, rent it out, or leave it vacant. You don’t need the beneficiary’s permission for any of it.

The deed also doesn’t affect your eligibility for public assistance programs like Medicaid during your lifetime, and it doesn’t affect the beneficiary’s eligibility either.¹ This matters. An outright gift or a transfer into certain trusts can trigger Medicaid look-back problems. A transfer on death deed avoids that because no transfer actually happens until death.

How to Create and Record One

A valid Maine transfer on death deed has to do three things: contain the essential elements of a properly recordable deed, state that the transfer takes effect at your death, and be recorded before you die in the registry of deeds for the county where the property is located.² Miss any of the three and the deed does nothing. The recording step is the one people forget. A perfectly drafted deed sitting in a drawer has no legal effect.

Before recording, you sign the deed in front of a notary. Maine provides an optional statutory template with the required language, including spaces for the property description, your signature, and the beneficiary designation.³ The beneficiary doesn’t need to sign, doesn’t need to consent, and doesn’t even need to know the deed exists. There’s no delivery requirement and no requirement of consideration.

The mental capacity you need to sign is the same capacity required to make a will.⁴ That’s a lower bar than contract capacity: you need to understand what you own, who your natural heirs are, and what the deed does.

Recording costs $35 per instrument when a private individual files the deed. State and municipal filings pay $25.⁵

Choosing Beneficiaries

You can name one beneficiary or several. When you name more than one, they take concurrent interests in equal and undivided shares with no right of survivorship, unless the deed says otherwise.⁶ So if you name three children and one of them later dies, that child’s share passes through their own estate rather than automatically going to their siblings.

Every beneficiary’s interest is contingent on surviving you. If a beneficiary dies before you do, their share lapses.⁶ When you’ve named several people and one predeceases you, the surviving beneficiaries split that share proportionally. When you’ve named only one person and that person dies first, the deed fails entirely and the property goes through your estate.

Name an alternate. Maine’s optional template includes a field for an alternate beneficiary who takes the property if the primary beneficiary does not survive you.⁴ If the whole point of the deed is to keep the property out of probate, an alternate is the difference between a plan that works and a plan that quietly collapses when your first choice predeceases you.

Revoking or Changing the Deed

You can revoke a transfer on death deed at any time before you die, without asking the beneficiary. Maine recognizes three methods:³

Complete and notarize a revocation form that specifically revokes the earlier deed, then record it in the same county registry.
Record a new transfer on death deed covering the same property. A properly acknowledged and recorded new deed supersedes the old one.
Transfer the property to someone else during your lifetime. This revokes the deed only if the new deed expressly says it revokes the earlier transfer on death deed.

Whichever method you pick, the revocation has to be notarized and recorded before your death. An unrecorded revocation has no more force than an unrecorded deed.

Divorce

Maine’s probate code generally revokes dispositions to a former spouse when a couple divorces, and the transfer on death deed statute cross-references that provision. A divorce or annulment should revoke a deed naming your ex-spouse as beneficiary.⁴ Don’t rely on that. If you divorce, record a formal revocation or a replacement deed. A legal separation that doesn’t end the marriage doesn’t trigger the automatic revocation.

Mortgages, Liens, and Creditors

A transfer on death deed does not clean off debts attached to the property. Your beneficiary takes the property subject to every mortgage, lien, encumbrance, and interest that existed when you died.⁶ Owe $150,000 on the mortgage at death? Your beneficiary inherits the property with that mortgage still on it. They don’t become personally liable on the loan, but the lender’s lien stays.

Federal law keeps the lender from calling the loan due. Under the Garn-St. Germain Act, a lender cannot enforce a due-on-sale clause when property passes to a relative because of the borrower’s death.⁷ This protection applies to residential properties with fewer than five dwelling units. Your beneficiary can keep making the existing payments without refinancing.

During your lifetime, the deed does not affect any creditor’s rights against you or the property, even if the creditor knows the deed exists.¹ After your death, unsecured estate debts can potentially reach the property depending on whether your other estate assets are enough to cover them.

A Transfer on Death Deed Cannot Disinherit a Spouse

Maine gives a surviving spouse the right to claim an elective share equal to 50% of the marital-property portion of the augmented estate.⁸ The augmented estate specifically includes property held in transfer on death registration that passed outside probate to someone other than the surviving spouse.⁹

If you use a deed to leave the house to your adult child from a prior marriage, your surviving spouse can still claim a share of that property’s value through the elective share process. The deed moves the property outside of probate, not outside of your spouse’s statutory rights.

Tax Consequences

Receiving property this way is not an income tax event for the beneficiary. Inherited property is generally excluded from a recipient’s gross income, and a transfer on death deed works the same way as any other inheritance for that purpose.

The beneficiary also gets a step-up in basis. Their cost basis in the property resets to fair market value on the date of your death. Buy a house for $80,000, die when it’s worth $350,000, and your beneficiary’s basis is $350,000. Sell it the next month for $355,000, and only $5,000 is subject to capital gains tax. That treatment is one of the strongest reasons to pass property at death rather than gift it during your lifetime, because a lifetime gift carries your original basis forward.

Maine has its own estate tax with a much lower threshold than the federal one. For deaths in 2026, the Maine exclusion is $7,160,000. Estates above that face graduated rates: 8% on the first $3 million over the exclusion, 10% on the next $3 million, and 12% on anything higher.¹⁰ Property that passes by transfer on death deed is still part of your Maine taxable estate because you owned it when you died.

When a Transfer on Death Deed May Not Be the Right Tool

Medicaid Estate Recovery

The deed doesn’t affect Medicaid eligibility during your lifetime, but Medicaid estate recovery after death is a separate question. States can seek reimbursement for Medicaid benefits from a decedent’s estate, and whether property passing by transfer on death deed is reachable depends on how broadly Maine defines “estate” for recovery purposes. If you’ve received long-term care benefits through Medicaid, talk to an elder law attorney before treating this deed as your full plan.

Family Disputes

A will can distribute an entire estate across multiple heirs with explanatory language. A transfer on death deed is blunter: it moves one property to one named person (or a set of named people). Three children, one house, one beneficiary — the other two children may feel cut out. Because the transfer happens outside probate, excluded heirs have fewer procedural tools to challenge it, and the low capacity standard for signing the deed makes capacity challenges hard to win.

Title Insurance

Title insurance companies can be cautious about insuring property that recently transferred by this method. Concerns about potential creditor claims, spousal elective share rights, or challenges from excluded heirs can slow the process or trigger extra requirements before a policy issues. If your beneficiary is likely to sell soon after inheriting, factor that in.

What to Do Next

If a transfer on death deed fits your situation, use Maine’s statutory template, sign it in front of a notary, name an alternate beneficiary, and record it in the county registry of deeds where the property sits. Keep a copy with your other estate planning documents, and revisit the deed after any major life change — marriage, divorce, the death of a beneficiary, the sale of the property, or a diagnosis that puts long-term care on the table.

1
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 18-C Section 6-412 – Effect of Transfer on Death Deed During Transferor’s Life
2
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 18-C Section 6-409 – Requirements
3
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 18-C Section 6-417 – Optional Template for Transfer on Death Deed
4
Maine Legislature. An Act Regarding Nonprobate Transfers on Death
5
Maine Legislature. Maine Code Title 33 Section 751 – Schedule
6
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code 18-C Section 6-413 – Effect of Transfer on Death Deed at Transferors Death
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 USC 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions
8
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 18-C Section 2-202 – Elective Share
9
Maine State Legislature. Maine Code Title 18-C Section 2-205 – Decedents Nonprobate Transfers to Others
10
Maine Revenue Services. Estate Tax (706ME)