Massachusetts Life Estate Deed

If you're searching for a Massachusetts version of the transfer-on-death deed that many other states offer for real estate, the search comes up short. What Massachusetts does have is transfer-on-death registration for securities — M.G.L. c. 190B, § 6-306 confirms that a beneficiary designation on a security registered in beneficiary form doesn't change ownership until the owner dies — but that statute is about securities, not real property.

On the real-estate side, the closest thing on record is legislative history, not enacted law. House Bill H.3382, filed in the 2019–2020 session, would have added a beneficiary-deed provision to Chapter 183, and an earlier bill, H.1565, dealing with transfer-on-death real-estate registration, was referred to the Judiciary Committee and later folded into a study order. Neither bill history adds up to an enacted general Massachusetts real-property TOD-deed statute.

That leaves the retained life-estate/remainder deed as the tool families actually reach for — and it comes with real strings attached. A recorded deed that keeps a life estate for the owner while transferring the remainder interest to someone else has surfaced in MassHealth litigation, where the agency treated the remainder transfer as an estate-planning move carrying its own eligibility consequences. Anyone considering this route needs a transfer-penalty and lien analysis before signing anything.