A quitclaim deed is one type of legal document used for transferring property from one owner to another. But unlike most property transfer deeds, it doesn’t make the grantor liable for any future actions against the title to the property. It transfers all the assumed ownership rights from the grantor to the grantee but with no assurances as to what the transferred property rights are. A quitclaim deed action takes very little time because a title search is not required, but this also means it comes with no guarantees that a property is free of liens or encumbrances.
Quitclaim deeds are most commonly used in family matters. A common use of a quitclaim deed would be to move property from one family member to another or into a trust. They’re also effective for simply removing a spouse from the title or a homeowner giving up the title in order to add a new spouse to the title. Alternatively, quitclaim deeds can be a simple way to clean up title errors by removing names that show up in title searches in error.
Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash