What a Transfer on Death Deed Costs at Atlanta Estate Planning
A Transfer on Death Deed costs $550. That is a flat fee for one Georgia property. You are quoted that number before any work starts, and it does not move because your file took longer than expected.
Georgia adds $25 to record the deed with the Superior Court Clerk. That fee goes to the county, not to us. Add the two together and a single deed runs about $575 from start to finish.
A Transfer on Death Deed is often shortened to TOD deed or TODD. Georgia has only allowed them since July 1, 2024, under O.C.G.A. § 44-17-1 and the sections that follow. It names who gets a specific property when you die. You keep full ownership while you are alive, and the property skips probate when you are gone.
What the $550 Flat Fee Pays For
We pull and read your current deed first. This is the step the cheap services skip. Your legal description has to be copied exactly, and if your house is held in a way you did not expect, we would rather find that out now.
Melissa drafts the deed. Georgia requires specific language for a Transfer on Death Deed to work. A deed missing that language is not a weaker deed. It is not a Transfer on Death Deed at all.
We handle the notary. You have to sign it yourself, because you are the owner. We arrange the signing so the witnessing is done correctly the first time.
We file it and send you the stamped copy. The deed has no legal effect until it is recorded, and it has to be recorded while you are alive. That stamped copy is the proof your family will need later.
Georgia’s $25 County Recording Fee Is the Same Everywhere
Georgia sets one price to record a deed. Under O.C.G.A. § 15-6-77(f)(1)(A)(i), the fee to file any real estate instrument is $25.00. A one page deed costs $25. A ten page deed also costs $25. It is not charged per page.
The fee is set by state law, not by your county. That means the recording charge itself is the same $25 in Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, and DeKalb. It is not a local price list you can shop around.
You may still see older articles quoting $9.50 for the first page plus $2.00 per page after that. Georgia repealed that per page schedule effective January 1, 2020. The flat $25 replaced it. If a source is still using the old numbers, it has not been updated in years.
There is no separate per name or per page add on. The $25.00 covers the whole instrument. The only extra charge in the statute applies when one paper cancels, releases or assigns more than one earlier instrument, and in that case the $25.00 is charged once for each instrument being cancelled. That does not come up on a normal Transfer on Death Deed.
What Online Deed Sites Charge, and What You Give Up
Georgia deed services fall into two groups, and the price gap between them tells you what you are buying.
Form sites sell you a blank document. You can download a Georgia Transfer on Death Deed template for under $60, and some are free. Nobody reads it, nobody signs off on it, and nobody files it for you.
Flat fee deed services sit in the middle. Georgia services that draft and record the deed for you generally run roughly $295 to $395. Some fold the county’s $25 into that price. That is real work, and it is cheaper than we are.
What the extra buys at $550 is somebody telling you no. A deed service will sell you a Transfer on Death Deed for a house you hold as a joint tenant with someone else, or for a house that is one of four you own, or when your beneficiary is a minor. In each of those situations the deed either does not work the way you expect or creates a new problem. A form site has no reason to raise it.
| Option |
What you pay, and what you get |
| Blank form you fill in |
Under $60. A template. Nobody reads your existing deed, nobody checks the legal description, and nobody files it with the county. |
| Flat fee deed service |
Roughly $295 to $395. They draft the deed and record it, and some include the county’s $25. Nobody tells you the deed is the wrong tool for your property. |
| Atlanta Estate Planning |
$550 plus the county’s $25. An attorney pulls and reads your current deed first, and tells you before anything is drafted if a Transfer on Death Deed will not hold for your house. |
| Full revocable trust plan |
$3,500. Covers everything you own, not one property, and covers you while you are alive if you cannot manage your own affairs. |
A wrong deed is discovered by your family, not by you. Your children find out at the clerk’s office after you have died, and by then the fix is a probate case, not a $550 correction.
When $550 Is the Right Amount to Spend
You own one Georgia property in your own name. One house, one owner, one clear title. This is the situation a Transfer on Death Deed was written for.
The house is most of what you own. If your home is the big asset and the rest is a bank account and a car, moving the house out of probate solves most of the problem for $550.
You have one beneficiary, or a few who get along. The deed can name more than one person, and it works best when those people will not need a court to sort out what comes next.
You want to keep control. You can sell, refinance, or change your mind. Your beneficiary has no rights to the property while you are alive.
You already have a will and powers of attorney. The deed handles one property and nothing else, and it does nothing if you become unable to make decisions.
Your beneficiary gets a tax break you cannot give them while you are alive. When somebody inherits a house, its tax value resets to what it is worth on the day you die. If they sell it soon after, the capital gains tax is usually small or nothing. Hand them the house now instead, by adding them to your deed, and they inherit your original purchase price along with it. That difference can be worth far more than the $550.
When a Cheap Deed Costs Your Family More Than It Saves
You hold the property as a joint tenant with right of survivorship. Georgia’s rule here catches people. If you hold a property as a joint tenant with right of survivorship, a Transfer on Death Deed only reaches your beneficiary if you are the last of the joint owners to die. If the other owner outlives you, your deed does nothing. A joint tenancy with right of survivorship decides who gets the house before a Transfer on Death Deed ever gets a chance to, and it does the same to other assets held that way. Problems with joint tenancy in Georgia walks through the rest.
You own several properties. Each one needs its own deed at $550. Four properties is $2,200 in deeds plus $100 in recording fees, and you still have no plan for anything that is not real estate.
You may need long term care. The deed does nothing while you are alive. It does not protect the house from a nursing home spend down and it does not help with Medicaid planning.
The state may still have a claim on the house after you die. If you received Medicaid for long term care, Georgia can seek repayment from your estate. Georgia reads the word estate broadly, and a Transfer on Death Deed is not a settled way around that. Nobody should treat a $550 deed as protection from it. If long term care is a real possibility for you, the deed is the wrong place to start.
Your beneficiary dies before you and you never named a backup. This is the quiet way a Transfer on Death Deed fails. If the person you named is gone and there is no alternate on the deed, there is nobody left to take the property, and the house goes through probate exactly as if you had never signed anything. Naming an alternate costs nothing extra. Leaving the deed alone for ten years after you sign it is what costs.
Your beneficiary is a minor or has special needs. Handing real estate straight to a minor pulls a court in to manage it, which is the outcome the deed was supposed to avoid.
You might lose capacity before you die. The deed has no answer for that. If nobody can legally act for you, your family is in court while you are still alive.
A TOD Deed Compared to a Full Trust Plan
A full revocable trust plan at Atlanta Estate Planning is $3,500. A Transfer on Death Deed is $550. The honest way to read that gap is that you are buying two different things, not the same thing at two prices.
The deed moves one property at your death. That is the whole job.
The trust plan covers everything you own and covers you while you are alive. It handles bank accounts, investments, and personal property. It names someone to manage your affairs if you cannot. It can hold money for a child instead of handing it over. The trust plan is $3,500 at Atlanta Estate Planning. What a revocable living trust costs in Georgia breaks that price down, and the revocable living trust service page lists what the plan includes.
Compare both to the cost of doing nothing. A simple Georgia probate runs about $14,700 and takes roughly 13 months. Against that, $550 to move one house out of probate is a real saving. It is also only a saving on that one house. That figure is attorney fees plus court costs on an average simple Georgia estate. Cost of probate in Georgia breaks it down.
There is one more deed people ask about. A Lady Bird deed and an enhanced life estate deed are two names for the same instrument, and Georgia is not one of the states that recognizes it. Georgia’s own version of that idea is the Transfer on Death Deed, which is what this fee covers. If you have read about a Lady Bird deed, raise it on the call.
There is also a middle option people miss. If your goal is getting the house out of probate as part of a real plan, transferring the property into a trust costs the same $550 per deed and puts the house inside a structure that covers the rest of your life too.
What Raises Your Cost Past $550
More than one property. The fee is per deed. Two Georgia properties is $1,100 plus $50 in recording fees.
A title problem in your current deed. An old error, a name never corrected after a death or a divorce, or a legal description that does not match the plat. Fixing that is separate work and we quote it before we do it.
Property outside Georgia. A Georgia Transfer on Death Deed only reaches Georgia land. Out of state property needs a lawyer licensed in that state.
Changing it later. You can revoke or replace the deed any time while you are alive and competent. The replacement is new drafting work and has to be recorded, so it carries its own fee and its own $25.
Property held by a business. A house or rental owned by an LLC is not owned by you personally, so a Transfer on Death Deed on it does nothing. What passes is your interest in the company, which is a different problem.
What Your Beneficiary Files After You Die
The $550 is the whole cost while you are alive. There is one more step, and it falls to the person you named.
Your beneficiary records an acceptance affidavit with the county clerk. They attach a certified copy of your death certificate and Georgia’s real estate transfer tax declaration, the PT-61 form. Once that is recorded, the property is theirs. No probate case is opened and no executor is appointed.
The house arrives with everything attached to it. A Transfer on Death Deed moves the property, not the debt on it. Your beneficiary takes the house subject to the mortgage, any security deed, unpaid property taxes, and any lien recorded against it. Skipping probate does not clear any of that. If the mortgage is large, the person you named needs to know before they inherit, because keeping the house means keeping the payment.
Georgia no longer sets a deadline for recording the acceptance affidavit. The law used to give the beneficiary nine months to record the affidavit, and the property went back to the estate if they missed it. House Bill 413 removed that deadline and removed the penalty with it, for deaths on or after July 1, 2026. Any article still describing a nine month window is describing law that no longer applies.
Somebody now has a duty to tell your beneficiary the deed exists. In place of the deadline, Georgia added a notice rule. If a personal representative is appointed for your estate, that person has to notify each named beneficiary about the Transfer on Death Deed.
Removing the deadline is not permission to wait. Until the affidavit is recorded, the property still sits in your estate on paper, which makes it harder to sell, insure, or borrow against.
What to Do Next
Start with a free call. Your first call is free, about 15 minutes, and happens by phone with Shawn. If you move forward, your next step is the Design Meeting with Melissa, which is credited toward your plan.
Tell Shawn what you own and who you want it to go to.
Bring the answer to three questions. How many properties do you own? Is anyone else’s name on the deed? Is the house most of what you have, or one piece of something bigger?
If a Transfer on Death Deed fits, the price is $550 plus the county’s $25. If it does not, we will say so on the call rather than sell you a deed that will not hold. For the wider picture, start at our Georgia estate planning hub, or read the full guide to Georgia Transfer on Death Deeds.
