Harford County Transfer on Death Deed (Trust Beneficiary) Form

A trust cannot take title to Maryland real estate in its own name; it holds property through whoever is serving as its trustee. A transfer-on-death deed that names a trust therefore answers a question an ordinary beneficiary deed never faces: which trustee takes when the owner who signed the deed was also the trust's first trustee. This Maryland transfer on death deed is built around that answer, under Real Property Article, Title 14, Subtitle 10, for one owner who holds the property alone and designates the trustee of a named trust, identified by the trust's name and the date of its trust instrument, as the beneficiary who takes at the owner's death.

A designation that follows the office of trustee

The Act defines a designated beneficiary as a person, and Section 1-101 of the Real Property Article defines a person to include a trustee, a fiduciary, or a representative of any kind. The deed designates the trustee in that capacity, and its fixed text extends the designation to any successor trustee serving at the owner's death. The Maryland Trust Act supplies the mechanics: under Estates and Trusts Section 14.5-704, a trusteeship becomes vacant when the trustee dies, and a vacancy that has to be filled passes first to the person the trust instrument names as successor trustee. An owner who signed a revocable living trust and serves as its initial trustee can record this deed naming that trust; at death the successor trustee takes, and the property passes under the trust's own terms rather than through probate.

During life, and at death

Nothing passes while the owner is living. Under Section 14-1007 the recorded deed leaves the owner free to sell, mortgage, or lease the property and creates no interest in favor of the trustee. The owner keeps the full right to revoke, and a lifetime deed to anyone, including the trustee, revokes it by inconsistency under Section 14-1008. At death the trustee takes the owner's interest subject to every mortgage and lien then on the property, without covenant or warranty of title, and subject to the limits Section 14-1009 lists, the surviving spouse's elective share among them. An optional alternate section, in the statutory form's words, names who takes if the primary designation fails.

One owner, one trust, one certificate

The form recites exactly one record owner, the sole owner of the property, signing in that person's own capacity, with one signature block carrying the (SEAL) notation of the statutory form and one acknowledgment certificate in the short form of State Government Section 18-216, Maryland has no community property regime and abolished dower and curtesy, so a spouse who is not on the title has no signature line. The trustee does not sign, and the trust instrument is not recorded. The form is not set up as a deed by two or more owners, as a deed by a fractional co-owner, as a deed signed by a trustee, an entity, a personal representative, or an attorney-in-fact, or as a designation to an individual or an entity in its own name. An owner who holds the family home alone after a spouse's death and has moved the estate plan into a trust, and an owner whose trust holds property for a child with a disability under an independent trustee, present the pattern this deed recites.

Recording a trust designation in Maryland

The deed is effective only if it is recorded, before the owner's death, in the land records of the county or Baltimore City where the property lies, and it travels with a Land Instrument Intake Sheet, since Section 3-104(g)(6)(ii) lets the clerk refuse a transfer-on-death deed that arrives without one. The deed carries the certification of preparation that Section 3-104(f) requires as a printed choice between the attorney certification and the party certification. The Act's exemption of a deed of the owner's primary or secondary residence from recordation tax and from State and county transfer tax is keyed to the owner's residence, not to who the beneficiary is, so a trust designation of the home qualifies on the same terms; recording fees still apply.

The package includes the fillable transfer on death deed as a PDF, a completed example filled in for a Harford County owner naming her revocable living trust and an alternate, and a plain-language guide that walks through each section, the trust entries, signing, and recording. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.