About Quitclaim Deed Instructions

Who Writes This Site

This site is written and maintained by Toby Kay, a retired real estate broker formerly licensed in Arizona, Nevada, and California.

• Held real estate broker licenses in three states — Arizona, Nevada, and California — from 1989 to 1999. These licenses are retired and no longer active.
• Founded and owned Bestway Realty in Arizona, growing it into one of the larger independent brokerages in the state, with a full staff of licensed brokers and salespeople.
• Founded Kaktus Real Estate Forms, among the first real estate forms businesses on the internet.

Deeds were routine work across all of it. Reviewing a legal description before a closing, sorting out which county a property actually records in, catching the missing notary block before a document went to the recorder, explaining to a seller why a quitclaim deed would not do what they hoped it would do — that was the ordinary business of running a brokerage. The questions this site answers are questions I spent years answering across a desk.

The Kaktus Story, and Why This Site Exists

Somewhere in the middle of the brokerage years, the internet arrived, and the idea of selling real estate forms online seemed worth trying. The company was named Kaktus Real Estate Forms — the misspelling was deliberate, a small joke about running a business from the Arizona desert.

It launched so early in the life of the commercial web that there was no practical way to take a credit card. Payment processing as it exists now simply did not exist yet. So the site ran on the honor system: download the form you need, then mail a check. Alongside it was a refund promise — if the form did not work, was not accepted by a government agency, or was unusable for any reasonable reason, the money came back.

Two things about that turned out to be true. Most people mailed the check. And refunds were almost never requested.

The site is still in the Internet Archive. A snapshot from January 1998 lists the forms by price — free, three dollars, six dollars — available to download straight away, with no way to pay for them on the page. A quit claim deed was one of the forms.

The business had roughly two good years before the larger players arrived. Revenue declined steadily after that. Nobody had heard of search engine optimization yet, and there was no established playbook for keeping a site visible once better-funded competitors showed up. The domain, Kaktus.com, was eventually sold to a New York clothing company that still operates on it today.

What stayed was the observation that started the whole thing: ordinary people need to handle a property document once or twice in their lives, and the information available to them is written either for lawyers or for nobody. That gap has narrowed less than you would expect in the decades since. This site is an attempt to close some of it.

How State Requirements Are Researched

Every state page on this site is built from primary sources rather than from other websites. Specifically:

• State statutes governing deed form, execution, acknowledgment, and witness requirements.
• County recorder, county clerk, and register of deeds offices — their own published formatting standards, fee schedules, and submission procedures.
• Secretary of State notary divisions for notarization rules, including remote online notarization authority and its limits.
• State departments of revenue or taxation for transfer tax, deed tax, and documentary fee rules, along with published exemptions.

Where a requirement comes from a specific statute, the statute is identified on the page. Where a rule varies by county rather than by state, the page says so plainly instead of picking one county and presenting it as the state rule.

Updates and Corrections

State pages carry a "last updated" date. Pages are reviewed when legislative sessions produce changes to deed, notary, or transfer tax statutes, when a recording office revises its fees or formatting standards, and on a rolling schedule otherwise.

How This Site Is Funded

Some pages link to paid deed preparation or related services, and this site may earn a commission if you use one. Those links are marked, and they exist on pages where a reader has asked about getting help — not woven into the state requirement guides.

Commission relationships do not affect what the guides say. No state's recording requirements, notarization rules, or transfer tax information is shaped by whether a service pays a referral fee, and no service is described here as necessary when it is not. Where a task can reasonably be handled without paying anyone, the guides say that.

What This Site Is Not

This is an educational resource, not a law firm and not a deed preparation service. Nothing here is legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Toby Kay's real estate broker licenses are retired and no longer active. She is not an attorney, does not practice law, and does not review individual deeds or advise on specific transactions.

Every property situation is different, and state and county rules change. Ownership wording, homestead rules, tax consequences, and title insurance implications can turn on facts that a general guide cannot see. For advice about your specific situation, consult a qualified professional licensed in the state where the property is located. Please see our Legal Disclaimer for details.

What You Will Find Here

• A complete plain-English guide to quitclaim deeds, from first concepts to recording
• Individual requirement pages for all 50 states
• Supplemental guides for state-specific forms, taxes, and special rules
• Clear explanations of legal terms, right where you encounter them

Questions, corrections, or a requirement we have missed? Get in touch.