Delaware Quitclaim Deed: How to Fill Out & Record One

Step 1: Find Your County's Recorder of Deeds

Delaware has three counties — New Castle, Kent and Sussex — and each keeps its land records in a recorder of deeds office. Your deed goes to the county where the property sits, even if you live somewhere else, and recording it there puts it on the record for the land lying in that county alone.

Each recorder is allowed to set its own rules on paper size, type size, margins and the blank space it needs at the top of the first page, and the three have settled on different answers. One county wants the parcel number in the upper left, another in the upper right. A deed that's laid out wrong comes back, or costs extra, so read the office's posted recording standards before you print anything.

Step 2: Set Up the Deed With Delaware's Wording

Delaware's deed law prints one general form for conveying real estate. It opens with the date, then names you and the grantee as the parties, then gives the consideration, then the words that hand the property over, then the description and a short recital of how you came to own it. Delaware doesn't print a separate quitclaim version, so the wording in the middle is yours to choose — and that choice is the whole difference between a quitclaim deed and something more.

The printed form uses "grants and conveys," and Delaware law gives those two words a job: left alone, they carry a special warranty, your promise that you haven't done anything yourself to spoil the title. A quitclaim deed promises nothing of the kind. So either swap them for words that only let go of what you hold, such as "remises, releases and forever quitclaims," or keep them and add a line restricting them, saying the deed passes your interest without warranty. Either way the deed is good — Delaware's deed law states plainly that a deed which doesn't follow the printed pattern is valid all the same. Below is that middle stretch, with quitclaim wording in place.

Quitclaim Deed

THIS DEED, made this [day] day of [month], [year],

BETWEEN [grantor's name], of [grantor's city and state], party of the first part, and [grantee's name], of [grantee's city and state], party of the second part.

WITNESSETH, that the said party of the first part, for and in consideration of the sum of [amount], the receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged, hereby remises, releases and forever quitclaims unto the said party of the second part, without warranty,

ALL [the legal description, copied word for word]

BEING the same lands conveyed to the party of the first part by deed of [name], recorded in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds in and for [county] County in Book [book], Page [page].

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, the said party of the first part has hereunto set the party of the first part's hand and seal the day and year first above written.

The closing line mentions a seal out of long habit. You don't need one: Delaware law says a deed still passes title without a seal, and without any of the old formal phrases.

Step 3: Write Your Name and Work Out Who Else Signs

Write your name the way it appears on the deed you received, so the two records line up in the index. If your name has changed since then, the practical fix is to carry both: "Mary A. Smith, now known as Mary A. Jones."

Who signs follows the interest being transferred. If the property is yours alone, your signature is the only one needed. If you own it with someone else and you're passing along only your own share, you sign and the other owner doesn't. If the deed transfers the whole property, every owner signs it.

A spouse who isn't an owner doesn't sign at all. Delaware did away with dower and curtesy, the old claims a husband or wife once held over a spouse's land, so a non-owning spouse has nothing left to release.

Property you and your spouse hold by the entirety works differently. That's the form of joint ownership Delaware gives married couples, in which each of you owns the whole rather than a half, and neither of you can hand it to an outsider without the other. Between the two of you the rule relaxes: you can deed your entire interest to your spouse on your own signature, with no third person in the middle.

Step 4: Name the Grantee and Set How Title Is Held

Write the grantee's full legal name, and an address where they actually get their mail. If the property is going into a trust, the trustee takes title, so write the trustee's name and the trust's name and date.

When two or more people are receiving the property, say in the deed how they'll hold it. Leave it out and, unless the two of them are married to each other, they take as tenants in common: each has a share that passes under their own will, not to the other owner.

For the survivor to end up with the whole property, say so in the deed. Delaware's statute asks that property be granted "as joint tenants and not as tenants in common," and for two centuries that phrase has been the safest way to do it. The Court of Chancery has since held that "joint tenants with right of survivorship" works as well, because those words can't mean anything else. Copying the statute's own phrase leaves nothing to argue about.

Married grantees are the exception to all of this. A deed to two spouses that doesn't name the estate creates a tenancy by the entirety by itself, and it doesn't even have to mention that they're married. That carries survivorship, and it keeps the property out of reach of a creditor chasing only one of them. Naming it in the deed — "as tenants by the entirety" — settles the question in writing. One grantee on their own needs none of this.

Step 5: Copy the Legal Description and the Recital of Title

The legal description is the part that tells the land records exactly which piece of ground you mean. Copy it word for word from the deed you received — every course, distance and boundary call, or the lot and block and the plot it was recorded on. A street address won't do the job. If the description runs long, attach it as an exhibit and name that exhibit in the deed.

Delaware's printed form leaves a line underneath for a recital of title: one sentence saying how the property came to you, naming the deed that brought it and the book and page where it sits in the county's records. Nothing makes you include it, but it's a kindness to whoever reads the record next, and it links your deed to the one before it.

Step 6: Fill In the Block at the Top of the First Page

Three things belong in the top corner of page one, stacked together, and two of them will stop the deed at the counter if they're missing.

• The tax parcel number. Delaware won't let a recorder take a deed unless the county's tax parcel number is on it somewhere conspicuous. It's on your tax bill and on the deed you received.
• "Prepared by," then a name and address. The law asks for those exact words followed by whoever drafted the deed, on the first page. If you prepared the deed yourself, that's your own name and address; Delaware doesn't require anyone else to have drafted it.
• A return address. The recorder sends the deed back once it's on the record, so say where.

The grantee's address belongs on the deed too, or attached to it, and it's worth putting near these so nothing gets overlooked. Which corner the block goes in, and how much blank space the recorder needs around it, is the county's call.

Step 7: Check Whether the Parcel Is in a Tax Ditch

A tax ditch is a drainage district, created by order of the Superior Court and run by the landowners inside it, that keeps water moving off a watershed. Delaware has 234 of them. Each one holds a right-of-way along its channel where nothing permanent may be built, and the landowners inside it share the cost of upkeep through an assessment.

If your parcel is on the court's list for a tax ditch, your deed has to say so — that the property may be subject to a tax ditch right-of-way or assessment — and give the date of the court order and where it's recorded in the county. If the deed you received carries that sentence, copy it across.

If you're not sure, the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, the agency that oversees the tax ditches, runs a statewide right-of-way lookup. Give it a parcel number and it sends back a letter saying what right-of-way, if any, crosses that parcel.

Step 8: Sign in Front of a Notary

The grantee doesn't sign the deed. The signatures on it are the owners', and each person signing appears before a notary, who fills in the acknowledgment: a short block naming the state and county, the date, and the signer by name, with the notary's signature, title, stamp and commission date. Delaware prints the wording for it. A notary in any other state can take your acknowledgment for Delaware property, and it doesn't have to be taken in the county where the property is located.

No witnesses are needed. Delaware's alternative to a notary is proving the deed in court through somebody who watched you sign, which is why the old printed form has witness lines at the bottom, but with a notary's acknowledgment you don't need them.

You can also do this over live video, with a notary who's in Delaware and using one of the technology providers the state has approved. For a deed you'll be recording on paper there's a route that fits: you sign the paper deed on camera along with a short declaration, mail both to the notary within three days, and the notary adds a certificate saying the signing was witnessed by video. Our remote online notarization by state page has the details.

Step 9: Fill In the State Forms

Both come from the Delaware Division of Revenue, which keeps them and their instructions on one page, with a word there about taking the current versions rather than a copy saved somewhere else.

Form RTT-TAX, the realty transfer tax return

This is the two-page return that tells the state what the property is worth and who's paying the tax on it. Delaware asks for it on every conveyance, tax or no tax, and it goes to the recorder at the same time as the deed. Older guides and county forms lists still call it Form 5402, its former number; RTT-TAX is the same return.

You'll fill in who's on each side of the transfer, the property's address and county, the amount paid and the value the county has on the property, and then the split between you and the grantee. You sign it in front of a notary, so it makes sense to do this at the same sitting as the deed.

If no tax is due, say why. Part D of the form is for exactly that: name the relationship or the reason, and the section of the law it comes from if you know it. That single entry is what keeps a family deed from being taxed at the counter.

Form REW-EST, the residence and gain affidavit

This one goes in with the deed as well — its own first line says it must be completed for all conveyances and presented at recording. It takes a single seller, so where two or more owners are transferring the property, the form tells you to add Form REW-SCH, which lists each transferor with the estimated tax paid for them.

Part 5 can end the form. It holds four check boxes, and ticking any one of them stops the form there with nothing to pay: the seller is a Delaware resident and not subject to withholding; the sale or exchange is exempt from gain realization; the gain realized is excluded from income for the year; or the sale is a foreclosure. If you live in Delaware, the first box is yours and you're done. Either of the two gain boxes asks for more: a short statement of the facts and the provision of the Internal Revenue Code you're relying on.

An owner who lives outside Delaware and is selling works the gain out further down the form, and the recorder collects the state's share of it before the deed goes on the record. A gift sits oddly here. Delaware's withholding law is written around a sale or exchange, and an outright gift, with nothing given in return at all, is neither — so there's no gain for the form to reach. A mortgage changes that. Where the property goes across with a loan still on it, the debt counts toward what you're treated as receiving, and that holds whether the grantee promises the lender anything or simply takes the property subject to the loan. Either way Part 5 prints no box for a gift, and the law doesn't address the point. What the form offers below Part 5 is a computation that starts from the price received.

The recording law does let a recorder take an exempt deed without this form. The form itself draws no such line, so filling it in is the course that never holds up a deed.

Step 10: Work Out the Realty Transfer Tax

Delaware exempts a long list of transfers from the tax, and the family relationships come first.

Transfers with no tax

No realty transfer tax is due on a deed between any of these:

• Spouses
• Former spouses, once the divorce is final, for property either of them acquired before the final decree
• A parent and a child, or that child's spouse
• A grandparent and a grandchild, or that grandchild's spouse — Delaware added this one in 2026
• Brothers and sisters, including half and step siblings

A few more cover the transfers that aren't really changes of ownership. A deed into your own revocable living trust is exempt, because the trustee is holding it for you. So is a deed back out of the trust to you. And a deed between you and a company you own is exempt where your share of the company matches your share of the property. A deed correcting an earlier one is exempt too, as long as nothing is paid for it. Those are the exemptions a quitclaim deed usually turns on, not the whole list, which also reaches transfers to and from government bodies, religious organizations, volunteer fire companies and land banks.

When transfer tax is due

Where no exemption applies, the tax comes to 4 percent of the value: 2.5 percent to the state, 1.5 percent to the county or town. The law apportions it equally, so the return shows 2 percent from each of you. Between the two of you, you're free to agree who actually pays it; with no agreement, Delaware puts the burden on the grantor.

Watch what "value" means, because this is where a family gift can surprise someone. Where a transfer is for less than the highest value the county has on the property for local tax purposes, the tax works on that value rather than on what changed hands: hand property to a friend for a dollar and the tax still lands on the county's figure. You can displace it by showing the property is worth less than that, and then the tax follows the greater of its fair market value and what was actually paid — and what's paid takes in any mortgage or other lien still on the property, whether or not the grantee agrees to repay it. A sale at arm's length between unrelated parties shows fair market value by itself; any other transfer has to show it some other way. That's one more reason the relationships above are worth checking first.

Two more rules can lower the bill. There's no tax at all where the property being transferred is worth less than $100. And a grantee who has never held a direct legal interest in residential real estate anywhere, and who means to live in this one as a principal residence within 90 days of the transfer — or within 90 days of the certificate of occupancy, where a residence is still to be built — pays half a percent less on their share of the first $400,000 of value. Where two people take the property together, both have to qualify.

Step 11: Get the Deed on the Record

Bring the signed deed, the state forms, any transfer tax, and the recording fee. The recorder notes the day it arrives, dates the recording from then, indexes it, and sends the original back to the return address on page one.

Record it promptly. Delaware settles competing claims to the same land by the clock in the recorder's office, not by the date on the deed: whoever records first comes first, whatever order the deeds were signed in.

Counties may take deeds electronically as well as on paper, though that route runs through approved submitters, and every recorder has to keep accepting paper. Keep the recorded deed with the property's papers when it comes back.