Nevada Deed Upon Death

Nevada gives property owners a way to name who receives their real estate at death without probate, and it gives them the exact words to do it. This form prepares a Nevada deed upon death, the instrument that NRS 111.655 to 111.699 (the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act) authorizes and that NRS 111.695 prints as a statutory form. Nevada's name for the instrument is distinctive: what other states call a transfer on death deed, TOD deed, or beneficiary deed is, under NRS 111.671, a deed that must be known as a deed upon death.

A deed written by the Legislature

Most states leave the drafting of a transfer on death deed to the owner. Nevada did not. NRS 111.695 provides that a deed upon death must be in substantially the following form and then prints the form: the title, the sentence by which the owner or owners convey to the named beneficiary or beneficiaries, effective on the owner's death, all right, title and interest in the described property, an appurtenances clause, an uppercase legend, a Social Security number affirmation, a date and signature line, and a notary certificate. This form reproduces that statutory text word for word and places the owner, beneficiary, and property entries where the statute leaves its blanks, so the recorded deed reads as the statute wrote it.

The uppercase legend carries the statute's own warnings. The deed is revocable. It does not transfer any ownership until the death of the grantor or grantors. And it revokes all prior deeds upon death of the same property, whether or not those earlier deeds conveyed the grantor's entire interest. The affirmation that the document contains no Social Security number, which Nevada recorders look for under NRS 239B.030, is part of the printed form.

Nothing moves until death, and nothing moves at all without recording

During the owner's life the deed is close to inert. NRS 111.685 provides that it does not affect the owner's right to sell, mortgage, or encumber the property, creates no legal or equitable interest in the beneficiary, does not expose the property to the beneficiary's creditors, and does not affect anyone's eligibility for public assistance. NRS 111.683 makes the deed effective without notice to, delivery to, or acceptance by the beneficiary and without consideration. The beneficiary does not sign and may not even know the deed exists.

Recording is where Nevada is strict. Under NRS 111.681 a deed upon death is valid only if it is executed and recorded in the office of the county recorder of the county where the property is located before the death of the owner, or of the last surviving owner where co-owners hold with a right of survivorship. A deed signed and notarized but left in a drawer conveys nothing. The form restates that condition on its face, and the guide walks through the county recorder's intake items under NRS 111.312: the assessor's parcel number at the top left of the first page, the grantee's mailing address, and the tax statement address, each of which the form carries. The deed is accompanied by the State of Nevada Declaration of Value, and NRS 375.090(10) exempts a deed upon death from the real property transfer tax.

Beneficiaries in the statute's own terms

NRS 111.673 lets the owner name one beneficiary or several, and where several are named, lets the owner state how they take in the terms Nevada title law recognizes: as joint tenants with right of survivorship, as tenants in common, as a married couple as community property, as community property with right of survivorship, or in any other tenancy recognized in the state. The owner may also designate a beneficiary to take as that beneficiary's sole and separate property, without a quitclaim deed or disclaimer from the beneficiary's spouse. NRS 111.667 defines a person broadly, so a beneficiary may be an individual, a trust, or an entity. The beneficiary field on this form carries the names, the mailing addresses NRS 111.312 requires, and any tenancy designation, and the guide shows the naming convention for each class.

One owner or two, in one deed

The statutory form is written in the first person plural as well as the singular, I (We), and this form carries that flexibility as its architecture. The owner field receives one or two natural persons signing in their own right, with the status recital the vesting deed supports: one unmarried owner, one married owner conveying that owner's own interest, two spouses or registered domestic partners, or two co-owners who are not married to each other. The form carries two owner signature blocks and two acknowledgment certificates, one for each owner, so two owners may sign on different dates or before different notaries; when one owner conveys, the second block and its certificate stay blank. The form is not set up for an owner who signs through an attorney-in-fact, for a trustee or an entity as owner, or for three or more owners on one instrument.

Two owners who hold as joint tenants with right of survivorship or as community property with right of survivorship are the configuration NRS 111.675 addresses, and the two-owner capacity of this form is what lets both convey in one deed. Where the deed includes a conveyance from each of the survivorship owners, it becomes effective on the death of the last surviving owner; where only one such owner signs, the deed takes effect at that owner's death only if that owner is the last to survive. The completed example shows two Washoe County spouses who hold as community property with right of survivorship conveying to their two children as joint tenants with right of survivorship.

The certificate the form prints

The NRS 111.695 form prints its own notary certificate, and this form reproduces it: the venue State of Nevada, County of, a sworn sentence, an acknowledgment sentence in which the owner, personally known to the notary or proved by satisfactory evidence, acknowledges executing the instrument, and the notary's signature and seal. NRS 111.240 requires a conveyance of Nevada real property to be acknowledged before it is recorded, and NRS 240.1655(3)(b) makes a certificate in a form otherwise prescribed by Nevada law sufficient. The guide describes what the notary completes, the Nevada stamp requirement, and the treatment of an owner who signs while in another state or before a Nevada electronic notary by audio-video communication.

Changing course later

The deed is revocable at any time, but only by a recorded act. NRS 111.697 provides that the revocation is valid only if executed and recorded in the county where the property is located before the death of the owner who executes it, that a deed upon death may not be revoked by a revocatory act on the deed itself, and that a revocation of a survivorship owners' deed not signed by all of them takes effect only when the last surviving owner executes and records it. The revocation of deed upon death is a separate statutory instrument under NRS 111.697, prepared and recorded separately and not included in this package. Recording a new deed upon death for the same property displaces the earlier one under NRS 111.677, and a lifetime transfer of the property to someone else voids the deed. After the last grantor's death, the beneficiary records the Death of Grantor Affidavit under NRS 111.699, with the death certificate and a declaration of value attached, and publishes the notice to creditors under NRS 111.689; the affidavit is likewise a separate instrument prepared and recorded separately and not included in this package. The beneficiary inherits subject to liens existing at the grantor's death under NRS 111.691.

The package includes the fillable Nevada deed upon death form in the NRS 111.695 statutory text, a completed example filled in for a realistic Washoe County fact pattern, and the guide that explains each part of the form, the statutes behind it, and the recording process. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing Nevada statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.