A Colorado quitclaim deed transfers whatever interest the grantor has in a piece of real property, with no promise that the title is clean or that the grantor owns anything at all. People use them to move property between spouses, add or remove a name after a divorce, gift property to a child, or fund a living trust. The form is short and the signing requirements are straightforward, but the risks live in what the deed does not do: it will not pay off a mortgage, clear a lien, or protect the person receiving the property from title problems that were already there.
What the Deed Must Contain
Colorado prescribes a short-form deed by statute. A quitclaim deed uses the word “quitclaim” in place of “convey” and leaves out any warranty language. That word choice is not cosmetic. A deed that says “convey” without warranties becomes a bargain and sale deed, which passes after-acquired title. A quitclaim deed does not: if the grantor later obtains full ownership of the property, the grantee gets nothing more than what the grantor held on the day of signing.1Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-30-113 – Short Form
The document has to name the grantor and grantee with their addresses, state the consideration (a nominal amount like “ten dollars and other good and valuable consideration” is common and accepted), and include the full legal description of the property. A street address is not a substitute. If the legal description conflicts with a street address or assessor parcel number on the deed, the legal description controls.2Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-122 – Inclusion of Street Address and Assessor Information With Legal Description Pull the legal description from a prior recorded deed, a title commitment, or the county assessor. A typo here can cost thousands to fix in court.
The grantor must be at least 18 and mentally competent. Colorado treats anyone 18 or older as fully capable of entering a binding real property transfer.3Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 13-22-101 – Competence of Persons Eighteen Years of Age Where more than one person is on title, every owner has to sign. A deed signed by one co-owner transfers only that person’s share.
Notarizing, Delivering, and Recording
The grantor’s signature must be acknowledged before a notary public. Without proper notarization, the county clerk will refuse to record the deed.4Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-103 – Acknowledgment Before Notary The grantee does not sign and does not need to appear before the notary.
Signing and notarizing are not enough. The grantor also has to deliver the deed to the grantee with the intent that it take effect now. A signed deed sitting in the grantor’s own desk drawer or safe deposit box is not delivered, even if the grantor mentioned it to the grantee. Handing the deed directly to the grantee works; so does leaving it with an attorney or escrow agent with instructions to release it. If someone later challenges the transfer, courts look at surrounding conduct: who started paying property taxes, who took over the utilities, whether the grantor treated the place as someone else’s.
Recording is the final step. Colorado is a race-notice state, so an unrecorded deed loses out to a later buyer or lender who records first without notice of the earlier transfer.5Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-35-109 Recording is not strictly required for the deed to be valid between the grantor and grantee, but skipping it leaves the grantee exposed. A grantor with a signed but unrecorded deed sitting in a file can still convey the property to someone else, and a creditor of the grantor can still record a judgment lien that attaches to the property as far as the public record is concerned.
You record at the county clerk and recorder in the county where the property is located.
Recording Fees and the TD-1000
Colorado charges a flat $40 recording fee per document, regardless of page count. This replaced the older per-page structure.6Colorado General Assembly. HB24-1269 Modification of Recording Fees
On top of the recording fee, Colorado imposes a documentary fee on deeds that convey title to real property. The rate is one cent per $100 of consideration, and no fee applies where the consideration is $500 or less.7Pueblo County Government. Fee Schedule A $400,000 transfer generates a $40 documentary fee. A family gift with no monetary consideration generates nothing. Certain transfers are exempt entirely, but any exemption has to be claimed at the time you present the deed for recording.8Justia. Colorado Code 39-13-104 – Exemptions
Along with the deed, file a TD-1000 (Real Property Transfer Declaration) with the county assessor. The form flags sales that may not reflect market value, which is exactly what family transfers, divorce settlements, and other non-arm’s-length quitclaim conveyances usually are. Filing it prevents the assessor from treating a below-market family transfer as neighborhood comparable data.
What Actually Transfers
A quitclaim deed transfers only what the grantor owned when they signed. Full fee simple in, full fee simple out. Nothing in, nothing out. There is no middle ground and no recourse against the grantor if it turns out they held less than they thought.
A few specific consequences follow from that:
- If the grantor is one of several joint tenants, the deed transfers only their share and severs the joint tenancy as to that share, converting it to a tenancy in common. The other joint tenants lose their survivorship right over the transferred piece.
- A quitclaim deed cannot cut off an existing life estate. If someone holds a life estate in the property, the grantee’s full possessory rights wait until the life tenant dies.
- There is no after-acquired title. If the grantor’s title was defective at signing but they cure it later, the grantee does not benefit.1Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-30-113 – Short Form
Because the deed carries no warranties, title insurers and lenders often scrutinize quitclaim transfers more heavily. Selling or refinancing later may require extra title work, and in some cases the grantee has to file a quiet title action to establish clean, marketable ownership. Those lawsuits typically run several thousand dollars in attorney fees and take months.
Mortgages and Due-on-Sale Clauses
A quitclaim deed transfers title. It does not transfer, satisfy, or modify a mortgage. The original borrower stays fully liable for the loan. If the new owner stops paying, the original borrower’s credit takes the damage. This is where most family quitclaim transactions go wrong: the grantor believes they are off the hook because they no longer own the house, and the lender disagrees.
Most mortgages include a due-on-sale clause allowing the lender to demand full repayment when the borrower transfers the property without consent. Banks do not always enforce it, but they can, and enforcement can lead straight to foreclosure.
Federal law blocks enforcement of due-on-sale clauses in several common scenarios involving residential properties with fewer than five units:
- Transfers to a spouse or children of the borrower
- Transfers arising from divorce, legal separation, or a property settlement where the borrower’s spouse becomes an owner
- Transfers into a living trust where the borrower stays a beneficiary and keeps occupancy rights
- Transfers after the borrower’s death to a relative, or through joint tenancy
Those categories cover a lot of family quitclaim work, but not everything. A transfer to a non-relative, a business entity, or a child’s spouse falls outside the protection.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 U.S. Code 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions
Liens and Encumbrances Come With the Property
A quitclaim deed clears nothing. Every lien, encumbrance, and restriction attached to the property before the transfer follows it to the grantee. Unpaid property taxes, an outstanding mortgage, a judgment lien from a lawsuit against the grantor, a mechanic’s lien from an unpaid contractor: all of it stays. Tax liens are especially dangerous because they outrank almost every other claim, and delinquent property taxes can lead to a tax sale regardless of who currently holds title.
Easements and restrictive covenants also survive. A utility easement, a neighbor’s driveway easement, HOA covenants controlling what you can build, all remain enforceable. In Colorado, an HOA’s assessment lien has statutory priority over most other liens, including a first mortgage, for up to six months of delinquent assessments.10Justia Law. Colorado Revised Statutes Section 38-33-3-316 – Lien for Assessments
Order a title search before accepting a quitclaim deed. The cost is small next to discovering a $50,000 judgment lien after the fact.
Gift Tax and Medicaid Consequences
When property moves for less than fair market value, the IRS treats the difference as a gift.11Internal Revenue Service. Gift Tax In 2026, the annual exclusion is $19,000 per recipient; gifts above that must be reported on IRS Form 709, though reporting does not necessarily mean tax is owed. The lifetime gift and estate tax exemption for 2026 is $15,000,000, set by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act signed on July 4, 2025.12Internal Revenue Service. What’s New – Estate and Gift Tax Most people never owe gift tax, but failing to file Form 709 when required can create problems with the IRS and complicate estate administration. Transfers between spouses are generally exempt regardless of value, and transfers incident to a divorce are typically not treated as gifts.
Medicaid is the bigger financial trap. Federal law imposes a 60-month look-back on transfers before a Medicaid long-term care application. Property given away within that five-year window is presumed to have been transferred to qualify for benefits, which triggers a penalty period of ineligibility calculated by dividing the value of the transferred property by the average monthly cost of nursing facility care in the state.13Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets
Some transfers are exempt from the look-back penalty: a home transferred to a spouse, to a child under 21, to a blind or permanently disabled child, or to a sibling who already co-owns the home and has lived there for at least a year. A transfer to an adult child who lived in the home for at least two years before the parent moved to a nursing facility and provided care that delayed institutional placement is also protected. Transfers outside these categories inside the look-back window can produce months or years of ineligibility while nursing home costs in Colorado often exceed $10,000 per month.
When to Bring in an Attorney
A quitclaim between spouses or into a living trust is usually simple. Things get harder fast when the property has an outstanding mortgage, when co-owners disagree, when the transfer involves a probate estate, or when Medicaid eligibility is anywhere in the picture. An attorney will catch problems a fill-in-the-blank form won’t, including a legal description that doesn’t match the assessor’s records or a transfer that accidentally severs a joint tenancy.
Title insurance is another reason to think carefully. Title companies are often cautious about issuing a policy on property that came through a quitclaim, and some will not issue one until the grantee has held the property for a period of time or completed a quiet title action. If you plan to sell or refinance, clearing up title issues before the transfer is far cheaper than doing it under pressure from a buyer or lender.