Ketchikan Gateway Borough Special Warranty Deed (Grantor to Own Revocable Trust) Form

Funding a revocable living trust with Alaska real estate takes a recorded deed: the owner conveys the property out of the owner's individual name and into the owner's own name as trustee, so the trust holds legal title. This Alaska special warranty deed prepares exactly that transfer, pairing the trustee vesting with a warranty limited to the grantor's own period of ownership.

One owner, one trust, one deed

The form recites a single grantor and a single grantee: the same person, once in an individual capacity and once as trustee, identified by the trust's exact name and the date of the trust instrument. The completed example shows an Anchorage owner conveying to herself as trustee of her own revocable living trust, the pattern a living trust transfer deed presents in the record. Because the trust instrument, not the deed, says who benefits from the trust and who succeeds as trustee, the deed carries no beneficiary designations; it moves title and leaves the plan's terms where Alaska trust law under AS 13.36 puts them, in the trust itself. A certification of trust under AS 13.36.079, prepared separately and not included in this package, is the document a title company or lender examines instead of the full trust instrument.

A warranty limited to the grantor's own acts

Alaska has no statutory special warranty deed form. The statutes supply a full warranty deed built on the words conveys and warrants, a quitclaim built on conveys and quitclaims, and a rule, AS 34.15.080, that no covenant is implied in a conveyance of real estate. A special warranty therefore has to be written out, and this deed writes it out: the grantor warrants and defends the title against the lawful claims of all persons claiming by, through, or under the grantor, but against none other. Searches for a limited warranty deed or covenant deed describe the same middle ground between the full statutory warranty and a bare quitclaim, a natural posture where the grantor and the trustee taking title are the same person and the warranty's practical work is preserving the title's continuity of record.

Recording by district in Alaska's statewide system

Deed recording in Alaska runs through the Department of Natural Resources, which administers a statewide recorder's office organized into 34 recording districts rather than county offices. The face of the deed identifies the recording district under AS 40.17.030(a)(9); the form carries a dedicated blank for it. The layout reserves the top two inches of the first page for the recording stamp, keeps one inch margins and 10 point type per 11 AAC 06.040, and carries the return address block the recorder requires before accepting a document. Alaska imposes no transfer tax and asks for no transfer declaration with a deed, so the recorded package is the deed itself and the per page recording fee.

The family home and a joining spouse

AS 34.15.010(b) provides that both spouses join in a deed or conveyance of the family home or homestead, and the Alaska Supreme Court reads the statute to reach the residence where the family lives. The form carries a labeled spouse joinder section, a second signature line, and a second acknowledgment certificate for exactly that situation, and the joinder text follows AS 34.15.010(c): the joining spouse's signature covers the joinder requirement without vesting any new interest in the joining spouse. Where the property is not a married grantor's family home, the section states its own inapplicability and its lines remain blank.

The download delivers the special warranty deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example filled in for a realistic Anchorage fact pattern, and a plain language guide that walks through every numbered section, the signing formalities, and recording in the district system. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.