Colorado Beneficiary Deed (Two Joint Tenants, Last Surviving Owner)

Two Colorado owners who hold their home or land as joint tenants with right of survivorship can name, in a single recorded deed, who receives the property after both of them have died. This Colorado beneficiary deed, sometimes searched for as a transfer on death deed or TOD deed, is drawn for exactly that pattern: two joint tenants sign one deed as grantors, the survivorship already in their title carries the property to whichever of them lives longer, and the deed carries it to the named grantee-beneficiary at the death of the last surviving owner, outside probate.

A deed that waits for the second death

Colorado's beneficiary deed statute, C.R.S. 15-15-401 to 15-15-415, keys the transfer to the death of the owner, and for joint tenants the statute says which death that is. Under C.R.S. 15-15-408, a joint tenant may use a beneficiary deed to transfer his or her interest, but title vests in the grantee-beneficiary only if the joint tenant who signed is the last of all the joint tenants to die. A deed signed by a joint tenant who dies first is simply not effective, and it never makes the grantee-beneficiary a co-owner with the survivor. The same section provides that a beneficiary deed does not sever the joint tenancy.

This form puts that rule into the deed's own words. The operative section carries the statutory form's conveyance language, transfers, sells, and conveys on grantor's death to the grantee-beneficiary, and then states that the deed does not sever the joint tenancy, that it is not effective at the death of a grantor who is survived by the other grantor, and that title vests in the grantee-beneficiary only on the death of the last surviving grantor. Nothing changes while either grantor lives: C.R.S. 15-15-402 leaves the grantors every power to sell, mortgage, lease, or revoke, and the grantee-beneficiary holds no interest until the transfer takes effect.

Two grantors, two acknowledgments, one recorded instrument

The form recites exactly two record owners holding as joint tenants with right of survivorship, and both join in the deed as grantors. Each grantor has a block for a full legal name and mailing address, a signature block with a printed name and date, and a separate acknowledgment certificate completed by the notarial officer under Colorado's Revised Uniform Law on Notarial Acts. The two certificates are a feature of the form's layout rather than a statutory requirement, and they let the grantors sign on different days or before different notaries, including a notary in another state, whose acknowledgment Colorado recognizes under C.R.S. 24-21-511.

Married couples who took title as joint tenants, unmarried partners, siblings who inherited together, and a parent and adult child all appear in Colorado land records holding this way; the form reads the vesting deed's joint tenancy declaration under C.R.S. 38-31-101, not the relationship between the owners. The form is not set up as a sole owner's deed, as a deed for tenants in common, whose separate undivided interests pass on each owner's own death, or as a deed signed by a trustee, an entity, or an attorney-in-fact, and it carries no selector for any of those configurations. Three or more joint tenants are outside its two-grantor design.

Grantee-beneficiaries, successors, and shares

The grantee-beneficiary section accepts one or more natural persons, a trust named as the trust, or another entity capable of holding title, with an address box that satisfies the Colorado rule that a deed without the grantee's legal address is returned unrecorded (C.R.S. 38-35-109(2)). An optional section carries the statutory form's successor clause, restated for two joint tenants: if the grantee-beneficiary fails to survive the last surviving grantor, a named successor grantee-beneficiary takes instead. Where several grantee-beneficiaries are named and one dies first, C.R.S. 15-15-407(5) adds that share proportionately to the survivors' shares unless the deed provides otherwise, and no anti-lapse statute applies. The grantee-beneficiary takes at the last death subject to every mortgage, lien, and other interest then affecting title, and subject to a Medicaid recovery claim where one exists.

The statutory cautions, printed as the statute prints them

The Colorado statutory form in C.R.S. 15-15-404(1) is permissive, and this deed carries its fixed statements verbatim: the uppercase caution that the deed must be recorded before the grantor's death to be effective, the statement that the deed is revocable and revokes all prior beneficiary deeds for the property, the warning that executing a beneficiary deed may disqualify the grantor from Medicaid under Title 25.5, and the warning that the deed may not avoid probate. Revocation follows C.R.S. 15-15-405: a recorded revocation or a later recorded beneficiary deed controls, and a will cannot revoke or amend the deed.

Recording in the county where the land lies

Recording is the step that gives the deed effect. The deed is recorded with the clerk and recorder of the county where the property is located, before the death of the owner, and a deed that is signed but unrecorded at death transfers nothing. Colorado clerks record a deed for a flat fee, commonly quoted at forty-three dollars with the statutory surcharges, and a beneficiary deed carries no state documentary fee because it is made without consideration. The form is letter size, meets the one inch top margin and the half inch side and bottom margins that C.R.S. 30-10-406 requires, and reserves the top inch of the first page for the clerk's recording information. A Colorado beneficiary deed for two joint tenants is a planning instrument for the second death; the guide explains how divorce, a lifetime severance of the joint tenancy, and the survivor's own later deed or revocation interact with it.

The package includes the fillable beneficiary deed form with a non-recorded instructions cover page, a completed example filled in for a Larimer County fact pattern, and a guide that walks through every section, the signing and notarization rules, and the recording process. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing Colorado statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.