Quitclaim Deed

A quitclaim deed is a deed by which the grantor releases to the grantee whatever interest the grantor has in a described parcel, without warranting that any such interest exists or that the title is free of defects. Florida prescribes a statutory form for it at section 689.025 of its statutes, and the operative words are the clearest statement of what the instrument does: the first party "does hereby remise, release, and quitclaim unto the said second party forever, all the right, title, interest, claim, and demand which the said first party has in and to the following described parcel of land, and all improvements and appurtenances thereto".

Read that carefully, because the important words are "which the said first party has". The deed conveys an existing interest and says nothing about its size or its condition. If the grantor owns the property outright, a quitclaim passes outright ownership. If the grantor owns a half share, it passes a half share. If the grantor owns nothing, it passes nothing, and the grantee has no claim against them for the disappointment.

What separates it from the other deed forms is the promise, not the transfer. A deed carrying covenants of title backs the conveyance with the grantor's own guarantee, so a buyer who later discovers a defect has someone to sue. A quitclaim carries no covenants, so the same buyer has the property and nothing else. Florida's two statutory forms sit a few sections apart and make the contrast plain: a conveyance in the warranty form is "held to be a warranty deed with full common-law covenants" under section 689.03, while the quitclaim form carries none at all. Both instruments are capable of moving full ownership, and a grantee who accepts a quitclaim has accepted the title risk in exchange for whatever made the transfer attractive.

The uses that make sense are the ones where the parties already know the history. A spouse releasing whatever interest they hold under a divorce settlement, a co-owner being added or removed, a homeowner moving a house into their own revocable trust, a correction after a name change or a misspelling, or a neighbor releasing a disputed strip after a boundary is resolved. In each case there is no stranger relying on a promise, because the grantee already knows what the grantor has. That is also why a purchase from a stranger is almost never done this way, and why a lender financing a purchase will not accept it.

The statute books contain a quiet verdict on the form. Florida's legislature created a curative procedure for a single scrivener's error in a deed's legal description, so that a mistyped lot number does not require a lawsuit. It defines the deeds eligible for that cure at section 689.041(1)(a) as "any deed, other than a quitclaim deed, which contains a scrivener's error". The reasoning is not hard to reconstruct: a curative statute works by assuming the parties intended to convey the property described, and a quitclaim deed carries no representation about what was intended to be conveyed in the first place. A quitclaim with a bad description does not get the statutory fix.

A quitclaim moves ownership and does not move debt. If the property carries a mortgage, the person who signed the note stays liable on it after they sign the property away, because only the lender can release a borrower. This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the area, and it comes up most often in divorce, where one spouse signs a quitclaim expecting it to end their exposure to a loan it does not touch.

The mechanics are ordinary deed mechanics, and they are short.

1. The instrument is prepared in the form the state accepts, identifying the grantor, the grantee and the property by legal description rather than by street address.

2. The grantor signs and acknowledges it, before a notary or witnesses according to the state's requirements.

3. It is delivered to the grantee. Delivery, not signing, is generally what makes a conveyance effective.

4. It is recorded in the county land records, which does not make it valid between the parties but does put the world on notice.

A hypothetical showing what the absence of a warranty means. Dev inherits a cabin along with his sister and believes he owns all of it. He signs a quitclaim deed to a buyer for $60,000. The title search afterwards shows Dev held a one-half interest, so the buyer received a one-half interest for $60,000 and now co-owns the cabin with Dev's sister. Because the deed promised nothing about what Dev owned, the buyer's complaint is not that the deed failed. The deed did exactly what it said. Had the same transfer been made with covenants of title, the buyer would have had a claim against Dev for the missing half.

Pros

• It is simple, cheap and quick, which suits the transfers it is designed for.
• It is the natural instrument for releasing an ownership interest rather than selling one, which is what a divorce settlement or a boundary agreement is doing.
• It moves property into or out of a revocable trust without pretending to make promises the owner would only be making to themselves.
• Because it carries no covenants, a grantor who genuinely does not know what they own is not signing a guarantee they cannot honor.

Cons

• The grantee gets no recourse. If the conveyed interest turns out to be smaller than expected, or encumbered, there is nobody to look to.
• It is a poor fit for an arm's-length purchase, and a lender financing one will generally refuse it.
• It is easy to sign under a misapprehension. People routinely believe it settles a mortgage, and it does not.
• Its simplicity makes it the instrument of choice in deed fraud, because a forged quitclaim looks exactly like a legitimate one on the face of the record.
• Some statutory fixes for ordinary drafting mistakes exclude it, so an error in the description is harder to repair than it would be in another form.