- Toll-Free: 1-888-500-KAZI
- info@kazilawfirm.com
A deed is the instrument that moves ownership of Texas real property from one person to another. Which deed you use determines what promises come with the property, whether a title company will insure it, whether it avoids probate, and whether your homestead exemption survives the transfer.
Most of the deed problems we are asked to fix were created by using the wrong form, or the right form filled in badly. This page explains what each Texas deed actually does.
The strongest deed and the standard in an ordinary Texas home sale. The seller warrants title against every defect in the property’s entire history, not just their own period of ownership. If a claim surfaces from 1962, the seller is on the hook. Buyers should expect one; sellers should understand what they are promising.
The seller warrants only against defects arising during their own ownership. Anything predating them is the buyer’s problem. Common where the seller never occupied the property — banks, estates, trustees, corporate sellers — and entirely reasonable in those settings.
A quitclaim conveys whatever interest the signer happens to have, with no warranty that they have any at all. Texas treats them differently from many states: because a quitclaim does not purport to convey the property itself, a recipient generally cannot claim status as a bona fide purchaser, and most Texas title companies will not insure title that passes through one.
Families reach for quitclaims because they are short and free online. The result is a house that cannot be sold cleanly. When the goal is to move property between relatives, a deed without warranty or a properly drafted gift deed does the same job without poisoning the chain of title.
Conveys property for no consideration — parent to child, most often. Straightforward to draft, but the tax consequences deserve a conversation first: the recipient takes the giver’s original cost basis rather than a stepped-up basis at death, which can convert a tax-free inheritance into a large capital gains bill.
Transfers the property itself, but with no warranties of title. Unlike a quitclaim, it does convey the property, so it does not carry the same title-insurance problem. A useful middle option for intra-family transfers.
Texas offers two deeds that pass real property to someone at your death without probate, and both let you keep full control while you are alive.
Authorised by Chapter 114 of the Texas Estates Code. You record it during your lifetime, it has no effect until you die, and you can revoke it at any time. You keep the right to sell, mortgage or give the property away — the beneficiary has no interest at all until death.
Two requirements catch people: it must be recorded before death to be effective, and revoking it requires a recorded instrument. Tearing up your copy or writing a contrary will does nothing.
Reaches a similar result by different mechanics: you reserve a life estate but keep the power to sell or mortgage without the remainder beneficiary’s consent. Texas is one of a small number of states recognising it.
The practical difference from a transfer on death deed is in Medicaid planning. Property passing by lady bird deed is generally treated as outside the probate estate for estate recovery purposes, and the transfer is not usually a divestment triggering the look-back. If long-term care is on the horizon, that distinction matters, and the analysis is fact-specific enough to be worth a conversation. See our detailed guide to lady bird deeds and where they go wrong.
The old approach: deed the property to your children, reserve a life estate for yourself. It avoids probate, but you have given away the remainder permanently. You cannot sell or refinance without every child’s signature, the property is exposed to their divorces and creditors, and you have made an irrevocable gift. Texas has better tools now; this one persists mostly out of habit.
Texas does not use mortgages in the conventional sense. When you borrow against a house here, you sign a deed of trust, which places legal title with a trustee as security for the loan and permits non-judicial foreclosure if you default.
It appears in the same county records as your ownership deed, and it looks superficially similar. It is not evidence of ownership; it is evidence of a lien.
Texas does not require witnesses, and it does not require the grantee to sign.
Deeds are recorded with the county clerk of the county where the land lies — the Collin County Clerk for Frisco and Plano, the Dallas County Clerk for Dallas, and so on. Denton County covers the western part of Frisco.
A deed is valid between the parties the moment it is delivered, recorded or not. But under Texas Property Code § 13.001 an unrecorded conveyance is void as to a later purchaser for value without notice, and as to creditors. In plain terms: fail to record, and someone else can acquire your property out from under you and win.
If the property is your Texas homestead, both spouses must join in the conveyance even when only one of them is on the deed. A homestead deed signed by one spouse alone is defective, and this catches second marriages and separated couples constantly.
Transferring your home can disturb your residence homestead exemption and your over-65 tax ceiling. Some transfers preserve both; some quietly reset your taxable value and cost you every year thereafter.
Transfers into a properly drafted qualifying trust generally preserve the exemption. Transfers to an LLC generally do not. Confirm before signing, not after the appraisal district notice arrives.
If someone has died and the house is still in their name, the deed stage has passed. What you need now is an affidavit of heirship if there was no will, or probate if there was. Our page on how Texas real estate passes to heirs explains what the intestacy statutes do by default — which is rarely what the family expected.
The Texas State Law Library’s guide to transferring property after death is a useful plain-language starting point if you want to read further.
Deeds are short documents where small errors are expensive and often invisible for years. We prepare warranty, gift and transfer on death deeds, lady bird deeds, trust funding deeds, and the corrective instruments that fix deeds prepared by someone else.
The Kazi Law Firm is a boutique estate planning practice in Frisco, serving Collin, Denton and Dallas counties, with offices in Cedar Park and San Antonio. Schedule a consultation, or read our overviews of estate planning in Frisco and wills and trusts.
If someone has already died and an estate needs to be settled, see our Texas probate attorney page — it covers independent administration, muniment of title, small estate affidavits and what happens when there was no will.