In the News: WSJ Covers Transfer on Death Deeds

Video

Good morning, folks. It’s Andy Stautz at Stautz Law and we are back with another talk about estate planning topics. Today’s kind of a fun one and it has to do with yesterday’s newspaper. So the Wall Street Journal has an article about transfer on death deeds. I’ve got it right here. “When Leaving Homes to Heirs Backfires.”

When Passing Along Your House After Death Gets Complicated – WSJ

And it’s all about transfer on death deeds, which not every state has. Indiana does. Obviously. I’ve talked about them before.  

And the article goes through, you know, the basic idea which I’ve explained: automatic out of probate transfer of a house or, you know, any property, actually–real property. And you know that, like I’ve said, the mechanism is simple. As part of an overall plan, it’s great.  

But there are lots of things that can go wrong. They’re slippery.  

Examples: Restrictions, Insurance

So a couple of the examples in the article are things I’ve warned about, so one of them is a transfer restriction in a contract. If you’ve got a property and for some reason your title to it is encumbered by a contract or whatever. And there’s an anti transfer provision and you try to use the transfer on death deed that might violate that.  

Another example is continued insurance coverage. They use a case in Minnesota where an heir lost the house because the insurer, you know, didn’t give him continuing coverage. Indiana’s got a law in place to prevent that. You’re allowed, you know, a grace period basically to figure out how to insure new property that comes to you that way.  

Lesson: Tread Carefully with TOD Deeds

But it’s interesting to see, you know, and it’s the Wall Street Journal. It’s a national paper, really, talking about estate planning. It was fun to see an outside perspective and see how it’s presented to a wider audience. And it lines up with with my advice, which is: great tool, you’ve got to know what you’re doing.  

So if you want a transfer on death deed as part of your plan, come talk to me. I like to do complete plans, but sometimes I’ll prepare a deed sort of as a one-off.  

Anyway, hope you’ve enjoyed that. I’ll try to link to the article and see if there’s an online version linked to that in the text description. But hope that was a fun one. See you next time. Bye.