To will a house to someone, you write a specific bequest into a properly executed will that names the beneficiary by full legal name, identifies the property by its legal description, states how any mortgage should be handled, and is signed in front of two disinterested adult witnesses. That much gets the mechanics right. Whether the house actually reaches the person you named depends on a few other things: your state’s spousal rights, whether you still own the house at death, probate, and whether Medicaid or estate taxes have a claim on the property first.
Gather Three Things Before You Draft
Ambiguity is what gets wills litigated. Three pieces of information, gathered up front, eliminate most of it.
Start with the beneficiary’s full legal name and their relationship to you. “My daughter Jane” is not enough if you have two daughters named Jane, or a stepdaughter with the same name. A full legal name paired with the relationship removes the question.
Next, identify the property with more than a street address. Pull the legal description from the existing deed, which lists lot number, block number, and the subdivision or survey name. Your county recorder’s office keeps a copy if you don’t. A legal description matters most if you own more than one property, but it strengthens the bequest in every case.
Finally, know the status of any mortgage, home equity loan, or lien on the house. The balance, the lender, and the loan terms all feed into a decision you have to make in the will itself.
Writing the Bequest
Leaving a specific piece of property to a specific person is called a specific bequest. The language should read something like: “I give my real property located at [full address], more particularly described as [legal description from the deed], to my daughter, Jane Anne Doe.” Direct, specific, and hard to argue about.
Say What Happens to the Mortgage
If the house has a mortgage, your will should say who pays it. You have two options. You can leave the house “subject to the mortgage,” meaning the beneficiary inherits the loan payments along with the property. Or you can direct the executor to pay off the mortgage from other estate assets before the transfer, so the beneficiary receives the house free and clear. The second option only works if the estate holds enough other assets to cover the balance without shortchanging your other beneficiaries.
Silence on this point is risky. State default rules fill the gap, and they don’t all point the same way. Some states presume the beneficiary takes subject to the debt; others apply estate funds to pay it off. Writing your choice into the will keeps this out of a default rule you may not have known existed.
Survivorship and an Alternate Beneficiary
A survivorship clause requires the beneficiary to outlive you by a set number of days, commonly thirty to sixty, before the gift takes effect. Without one, a beneficiary who dies a week after you do still inherits the house, and it then passes through their estate to their heirs. Those heirs may not be anyone you intended to benefit.
Name an alternate beneficiary for the same reason. If your primary beneficiary dies first and no backup is named, the house falls into your residuary estate or passes under state intestacy rules.
If You Sell the House Before You Die
A specific bequest of a house you no longer own fails entirely under a doctrine called ademption. The beneficiary gets nothing: not the sale proceeds, not a substitute property. The will says “this house,” you don’t have the house, and the gift disappears. If there’s any chance you might sell the property during your lifetime, add language directing your executor to give the beneficiary a cash equivalent or another asset if the house is gone from your estate.
Signing the Will
An improperly signed will is unenforceable, and courts apply the execution rules literally. You sign in the presence of witnesses to confirm the document reflects your wishes. Nearly every state requires at least two adult witnesses who watch you sign and then sign themselves while you and the other witness are present.
Don’t use a beneficiary as a witness. In most states, a witness who also inherits under the will has their gift voided, even though the rest of the will remains valid. Use witnesses with no stake in the document.
Attach a self-proving affidavit after signing. This is a sworn statement, signed by you and the witnesses before a notary, confirming the signing formalities were followed. During probate, an affidavit lets the court accept the will’s validity without tracking down your witnesses to testify. That matters if a witness has moved, become incapacitated, or died by the time probate opens.
Your Spouse May Have a Claim You Can’t Override
In most states, you cannot freely will your house away from a surviving spouse. This is the most common blind spot in do-it-yourself estate planning.
The majority of states give a surviving spouse an elective share of the deceased spouse’s estate, typically about one-third to one-half of its value. If your will leaves the house to someone other than your spouse, the spouse can reject the will’s terms and claim the statutory share instead. Because a house is often the largest asset in an estate, an elective share claim can effectively redirect it.
The right can be waived through a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, but it doesn’t disappear because your will says so. If you plan to leave the house to anyone other than your spouse, get a lawyer who knows your state’s elective share rules involved before you finalize.
What Probate Does With the House
After you die, your executor files a petition with the probate court in the county where you lived. The court validates the will, oversees payment of your debts and taxes, and eventually authorizes the transfer of your assets.
The executor inventories what you owned, notifies creditors, and pays debts and taxes from estate funds. If the estate lacks cash to cover debts, the executor may have to sell assets. Under standard priority rules in most states, a specifically bequeathed piece of real property is among the last things sold. General bequests and the residuary estate are tapped first. Large debts can still reach the house.
Probate takes time. Even a straightforward estate commonly runs twelve months or longer, between the mandatory creditor notice period, appraisals, debt payment, tax filings, and a final accounting. Throughout that period the house sits in the estate and the beneficiary does not yet hold legal title. Once the court approves final distribution, the executor signs an executor’s deed transferring the house from the estate to the beneficiary, and that deed gets recorded with the county.
Taxes the Beneficiary Should Expect
Inheriting a house is not itself a taxable event. Selling it afterward can be, and one federal tax rule makes a large difference in how much is owed.
Stepped-Up Basis
When someone inherits property, the tax basis resets to the home’s fair market value on the date of death rather than the price the deceased originally paid.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 1014 – Basis of Property Acquired From a Decedent This is the stepped-up basis. If your parent bought the house for $80,000 and it was worth $400,000 at death, the beneficiary’s basis is $400,000. Selling shortly afterward at that price produces zero capital gains tax. Only appreciation between the date of death and the sale date is taxed.2Internal Revenue Service. Publication 551 – Basis of Assets
A beneficiary who holds the house and later sells at a gain above the stepped-up basis pays long-term capital gains rates regardless of how long they held it personally. Federal rates for 2026 are 0%, 15%, or 20% depending on income. Some states add their own capital gains tax.
Federal Estate Tax
For 2026, the federal estate tax exemption is $15,000,000 per individual, and married couples can effectively double that.3Internal Revenue Service. Whats New – Estate and Gift Tax Estates below the threshold owe no federal estate tax, so most people passing a house to a beneficiary trigger no federal estate tax liability at all. A handful of states impose their own estate or inheritance taxes with lower thresholds, so exposure depends on where the deceased lived and where the property sits.
Medicaid Can Recover Against the House
If you received Medicaid-funded nursing home care or other long-term care services at age 55 or older, federal law requires your state to seek reimbursement from your estate after your death.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets The claim can reduce or entirely consume a house you meant to leave to someone.
Recovery is delayed, and sometimes prevented, if certain family members survive you. The state cannot pursue a claim while a surviving spouse is alive, or while a child under 21 or a child who is blind or disabled is living.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1396p – Liens, Adjustments and Recoveries, and Transfers of Assets Additional protections exist for siblings and adult children who lived in the home and provided care before the owner entered a facility. Once those protections lapse, the state’s claim takes priority over the beneficiary’s inheritance. If you’ve received Medicaid benefits and own a house, plan with an attorney before relying on the will alone.
Alternatives That Skip Probate
A will works, but it puts the house through probate. Three tools transfer the property automatically at death and avoid that process.
Revocable Living Trust
You create a trust, transfer the house into it by recording a new deed in the trust’s name, and name yourself as trustee. You continue to live in and control the property as before.5Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What Is a Revocable Living Trust? At your death, a successor trustee distributes the house to your named beneficiaries without court involvement.
Federal law prevents lenders from calling the loan due when you transfer your home into a trust where you remain the beneficiary and continue to occupy the property. The same statute protects transfers to a relative at the borrower’s death, so heirs inheriting a mortgaged house are also protected from the due-on-sale clause.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 U.S. Code 1701j-3 – Preemption of Due-on-Sale Prohibitions
Transfer-on-Death Deed
Roughly 30 states and the District of Columbia allow transfer-on-death deeds, sometimes called beneficiary deeds. You record a deed naming who will inherit the property at your death. You keep full ownership during your lifetime and can sell, refinance, or revoke at any time. Revocation requires recording a revocation form or a new TOD deed with the county. A will cannot override a previously recorded TOD deed.
Where the state allows them, a TOD deed is the simplest probate-avoidance tool for a single piece of real estate. Where it doesn’t, a living trust reaches the same result with more setup.
Joint Tenancy With Right of Survivorship
Adding someone as a joint tenant on the deed means the survivor automatically receives full ownership at your death, bypassing probate. Between spouses this works cleanly. For parent-child transfers and other non-spouse situations, the risks are real. Adding a non-spouse co-owner can trigger gift tax consequences. The property becomes exposed to the co-owner’s creditors, divorce proceedings, and legal judgments as soon as their name is on the deed. You also give up the ability to sell or refinance without their consent. For most non-spouse situations, a TOD deed or a living trust reaches the same probate avoidance without those downsides.