Arkansas Quitclaim Deed Instructions

Step 1: Know Which Office Records It

Your deed goes to the circuit clerk of the county where the land is — not the county where you live, and not where the grantee lives. In Arkansas the circuit clerk is also the county recorder, so one office does both jobs.

Arkansas has 75 counties, and a few have two districts with separate offices. If the property sits in one of those, ask which district covers it before you make the trip.

Step 2: Set Up the Page

The clerk can turn a deed away over the layout, so it is worth getting right. Use 8½ by 11 inch paper, and leave:

• a 2½ inch margin at the top right of the first page, kept clear for the clerk's file mark
• ½ inch at the sides and bottom of every page
• a 2½ inch margin at the bottom of the last page

Two more things the clerk looks for: the document needs a title at the top — “Quitclaim Deed” does it — and it has to name the grantor and the grantee. Everything must be legible. A clerk can waive the layout rules for good cause, but it costs an extra fee, so it's cheaper to get the margins right.

Step 3: Write Your Name the Way the Record Has It

The clerk will not accept a deed that doesn't name the grantor and the grantee, and there is a reason beyond form-filling. Every Arkansas recorder keeps an alphabetical index of grantors and grantees, and that index is how anybody tracing the title later finds your deed. If the name on this deed doesn't match the name on the deed that gave you the property, the two entries sit apart in the index and the chain of title has a gap in it.

So write your name as that earlier deed writes it, middle initial and all. If you have married, divorced or otherwise changed your name since, put both forms on the deed — the name the record knows you by, and the name you sign with now — so the index carries them together.

Where two people own the property together and both are letting go of it, both are grantors and both must sign.

Step 4: Name the Grantee, and Put an Address on the Deed

Write the grantee's full legal name, spelled the way they will want it indexed for as long as they own the place. Where a trust is taking the property, the index will carry whichever name you write, so put down both the trustee and the trust and be plain about which of the two is the grantee.

Arkansas wants the grantee's address on the deed, not only on the tax paperwork. If you use the short tax certification described in Step 10 rather than attaching the affidavit, the law requires the grantee's address to be shown clearly on the instrument itself. Putting it there from the start saves redrafting.

One thing worth knowing if you are the grantee: in Arkansas several of the recording jobs are yours rather than the grantor's. It is the grantee who signs the transfer tax affidavit, and the grantee who has to satisfy the clerk that the tax is either paid or doesn't apply. Step 10 is your step, not the seller's.

Step 5: Leave Out the Words That Create a Warranty

Arkansas law says that if a deed uses the words “grant, bargain and sell,” those words by themselves are an express promise: that you hold the property outright, that it carries no encumbrance you caused, and that the grantee will keep it against anyone else's claim. You don't have to write the promise out. The three words are the promise.

So a quitclaim deed leaves them out and says what it is doing instead. The usual wording is that the grantor “releases and quitclaims” to the grantee all of the grantor's right, title and interest in the property described below.

Check your draft for those three words before you sign, especially if you started from a form. A form written for another state, or a warranty deed form with the heading changed, can leave them sitting in the middle of a sentence, and they will be read as a promise.

Step 6: Add the Legal Description

The legal description is the part that says exactly which piece of ground is changing hands. Take it from the current recorded deed exactly as written, every figure included. An address by itself will not do.

Can't find your deed? It is a public record at the circuit clerk's office in the county where the land is, and most Arkansas counties let you search their land records online, so you can get a copy.

Step 7: Decide How Co-Owners Will Hold Title

If the deed puts the property into two or more names, say how those people will hold it. Say nothing and each owner has a separate share that passes to whoever inherits from them, rather than to the other owner.

If you want the survivor to take the whole property automatically, the deed has to say “as joint tenants with right of survivorship.” Arkansas allows that between any two or more people, whatever their relationship — it isn't limited to married couples.

You don't have to route it through a third person: the law lets an owner deed the property straight to themselves and another person as joint tenants, so a parent can go from sole owner to joint owner with a son or daughter in one deed.

Step 8: If You Are Married, Your Spouse Signs Too

Single owners can move on to Step 9.

If you are married and the property is your homestead, your spouse must sign. Arkansas law is blunt about the consequence: a conveyance affecting a married person's homestead has no validity unless the spouse joins in the deed, or conveys by a separate document, and acknowledges it. This holds even when the spouse's name is nowhere on the title. The homestead means the home the family lives in, not every property you own.

There is a second reason a spouse signs. Arkansas still has dower and curtesy — a surviving husband's or wife's claim on the other's land — and a spouse gives that up by joining in the deed or by a separate acknowledged instrument. So on a married couple's home, the spouse's signature is doing two jobs at once. If you are separated or your spouse won't sign, that is the point to take to a lawyer rather than to record the deed and hope.

Step 9: Sign in Front of a Notary

Sign the deed in front of a notary, who then completes an acknowledgment saying you appeared and told them the signature was yours. The clerk will not record a deed that hasn't been acknowledged.

Arkansas allows online notarization, where you meet the notary over live video instead of in the same room. The notary has to be an Arkansas notary registered with the Secretary of State to do it, and has to use one of the approved platforms. You do not have to be in Arkansas yourself.

Step 10: Work Out the Tax and Fill In the Affidavit

Arkansas charges a real property transfer tax, and the amount turns on what the grantee actually pays you. Nothing paid, or $100 or less, and no tax is due. Above that, the rate is $3.30 for every $1,000 of the price or any part of a thousand. The tax is worked out on the price alone, not on what the property is worth.

Where tax is due you buy documentary stamps for the amount and they go on the face of the deed. You can get them from a state revenue office or order them from the Department of Finance and Administration.

The affidavit goes in either way. It is the Real Property Transfer Tax Affidavit of Compliance, and it asks for the names and addresses of grantor and grantee, the date, the county, and either the full price or the reason no tax applies. The grantee signs it.

A gift is not the same as an exemption, and the difference changes what you write. Arkansas exempts certain transfers outright — a division of marital property in a divorce, an instrument correcting an earlier one, a beneficiary deed — and those can carry a short statement on the deed saying the instrument is exempt. Nothing on that list covers a straightforward gift between family members. It simply has no price to tax, so the affidavit says that no tax is due rather than claiming an exemption.

Step 11: Record It, and Bring Photo Identification

Take or send the signed deed, the affidavit, the stamps if any, and the fee to the circuit clerk in the county where the land is.

Since 2025 the clerk cannot accept it without photo identification. If you file in person, the grantor — or whoever signed for the grantor — has to appear at the office and show a photo ID or driver's license issued by a state or the federal government. If you file by mail, enclose a photocopy of it. The clerk attaches a copy to the recorded deed and keeps an unredacted copy under seal, so the number isn't on public display.

The rule is aimed at deeds brought in by the people signing them. It doesn't apply when the deed is presented by an attorney, a real estate broker or agent, someone from a bank, mortgage company or lender, a title insurance agent, or a government office. Nor does it reach deeds filed through a county's electronic recording system, which is how most professionals file.

Record it promptly. Until the deed is filed it gives no public notice, and Arkansas law will prefer a later buyer who paid for the property without knowing about your deed, or a creditor who gets a judgment against the grantor.

Where do I record an Arkansas quitclaim deed?

With the circuit clerk of the county where the property is located, who is also the county recorder. Not the county where you live. Arkansas has 75 counties and a handful are split into two districts with their own offices, so if the property is in one of those, check which district takes it. You can file in person, by mail, or through the county's electronic recording system if you have access to one.

Does an Arkansas quitclaim deed need witnesses?

In practice, no. What the clerk needs is an acknowledgment: you sign in front of a notary, and the notary certifies that you appeared and said the signature was yours. That is the route everybody uses, and it involves no witnesses.

You may read otherwise, and this is why. Arkansas law offers a second, much older route — a deed signed in front of two disinterested witnesses, which is then proved for recording by one of those witnesses swearing that they watched you sign. That is what the witness language in the statutes is for. Get the deed notarized and the question doesn't arise.

Does my spouse have to sign an Arkansas quitclaim deed?

If the property is your homestead — the home you live in — and you are married, then yes, and this is not a formality. Arkansas law says a conveyance affecting a married person's homestead has no validity unless the spouse joins in it, or signs a separate document, and acknowledges it. That is true even if your spouse has never been on the title.

On other property, the reason to get a spouse's signature is dower and curtesy, which Arkansas still has: a surviving spouse's claim on land the other owned. A spouse releases that by joining in the deed or by a separate acknowledged instrument.

Do I owe Arkansas transfer tax if I give property to a family member?

Generally no, because Arkansas taxes what is actually paid for the property, not what the property is worth. If nothing changes hands, or $100 or less does, there is no tax to pay. Above that the rate is $3.30 for every $1,000 of the price.

You still have to account for it. The Real Property Transfer Tax Affidavit of Compliance goes in with the deed and states either the price or the reason no tax is due. Write down what actually happened: the affidavit is signed and there are penalties for putting false information on it.

Why does the clerk want to see my driver's license?

Because Arkansas changed the law in 2025. A deed handed in at the counter or sent by mail cannot be recorded unless the grantor, or the person who signed for the grantor, shows a photo ID or driver's license issued by a state or the federal government. By mail, you enclose a photocopy. The aim is to make it harder to record a forged deed against somebody else's property.

The clerk attaches a copy to the recorded deed but keeps an unredacted copy under seal. The rule does not apply when the deed is brought in by an attorney, a real estate broker or agent, a bank or mortgage lender's representative, a title insurance agent, or a government office, and it does not reach deeds filed electronically.

Can I get an Arkansas quitclaim deed notarized online?

Yes. Arkansas allows remote online notarization, where you appear before the notary over live video rather than in person. The notary must be an Arkansas notary who has registered with the Secretary of State for it and who uses an approved platform. You can be anywhere; it is the notary who has to be in Arkansas. Where it works elsewhere is set out on our online notarization by state page.

Where do I get an Arkansas quitclaim deed form?

Arkansas doesn't publish one. There is no fill-in quitclaim deed in the Arkansas Code. What the state does publish is the tax affidavit that goes with the deed.

So you either write the deed from the requirements above, or start from a form made for Arkansas. Be careful with a general-purpose quitclaim form off the internet: the thing to check first is whether the words “grant, bargain and sell” appear anywhere in it, because in Arkansas those words turn your quitclaim deed into a warranty.

If you'd rather start from something built for Arkansas, see our Quitclaim Deed Help page.

What is the difference between a quitclaim deed and a warranty deed in Arkansas?

The words on the page. “Grant, bargain and sell” are an express promise that you own the property outright, that you have not encumbered it, and that the grantee will hold it against anyone else's claim. A quitclaim deed leaves those words out and passes whatever interest you actually have, with no promise attached.

One thing an Arkansas warranty does not cover, worth knowing if you are on the receiving end: improvement district assessments. Arkansas law puts those outside the warranty, the lien runs with the land, and the new owner picks up the instalments that fall due after the deed.

How do I find my Arkansas property deed online?

Land records are kept by the circuit clerk in the county where the property is, and most Arkansas counties have their records searchable online, though each county runs its own system rather than there being one statewide search. Start from your county clerk's website. If the records you need are older than what is online, the office itself holds them and will sell you a copy.