Quit Claim Deeds After an Alabama Divorce | The Harris Firm LLC

Signing the Deed Takes Your Name Off the House. It Does Not Take Your Name Off the Mortgage.

This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Alabama post-divorce property transfers. People sign the deed, walk away, and find out four years later that a loan they thought they were free of is still on their credit and thirty days late.

The Harris Firm LLC prepares and records quit claim deeds for a flat fee of $750, in any of Alabama’s sixty-seven counties, from offices in Birmingham, Chelsea, Montgomery, and Huntsville. We prepare deeds for divorces we handled and for decrees entered elsewhere or years ago. Consultations are $100 by phone or in person.

Where This Fits in Alabama Property Division

A Quit Claim Deed Promises Nothing, and That Is the Point

Alabama recognizes several kinds of deed, and they differ almost entirely in what the grantor promises. A general warranty deed says: I own this, the title is clean going all the way back, and I will defend it against anyone who says otherwise. A statutory warranty deed narrows that promise to the grantor’s own period of ownership. A quit claim deed makes no promise at all. It conveys whatever interest the grantor has, if any, and stops there.

That sounds like a weakness and in an arm’s-length sale it would be. Between divorcing spouses it is exactly the right instrument. You are not acquiring the house from a stranger whose title history you have never seen. You already hold it together, you already know its history, and the only thing that needs to happen is that one of the two names comes off. A quit claim deed does that cleanly, cheaply, and without the seller warranties that would be meaningless between people who bought the property together.

One consequence is worth understanding. Because the deed warrants nothing, it does not clean up anything else attached to the title. A judgment lien, a second mortgage, a contractor’s lien, an unpaid tax assessment — all of it survives the transfer and follows the property into the keeping spouse’s hands. If there is any doubt about what is recorded against the house, the time to look is before the decree is drafted, not after the deed is signed.

A related question we get often: can the decree itself transfer the property, with no deed at all? An Alabama court can order a conveyance and can vest title by its judgment, and a certified decree can be recorded. In practice a properly drafted and recorded deed is still the cleaner record, and title companies and lenders on the next transaction will look for one. Relying on a decree alone tends to surface as a problem years later when the keeping spouse tries to sell or refinance.

The Deed and the Mortgage Are Not the Same Thing

More post-divorce damage comes from this one confusion than from anything else in a property settlement.

Here is how it goes wrong. The decree says the wife keeps the house and is responsible for the mortgage. The husband signs a quit claim deed at the courthouse. Three years later he applies for a mortgage of his own and discovers that the old loan is still reported in his name, that it counts fully against what he can borrow, and that it has been sixty days late twice. He owns no part of the house, has no right to sell it, cannot force a sale, and cannot make the payments stop appearing on his credit. His only remedy is against his former spouse for breaching the decree — which does not repair the credit and does not satisfy his new lender.

There are only three ways off a mortgage. Refinance in the keeping spouse’s name alone. A formal assumption that the lender approves in writing and that expressly releases the departing borrower — rarer than people expect, and an assumption without a release does nothing. Or pay the loan off, usually by selling.

Which makes the sequence the whole ballgame. The deed should be signed at or after the refinance closing, not before. If the keeping spouse cannot qualify to refinance today, the decree needs a deadline, and it needs a real consequence attached — the house goes on the market if the refinance has not closed within a stated number of months. A settlement that says the wife “shall refinance as soon as practicable” and nothing more is a settlement that leaves one party exposed indefinitely.

Executing and Recording the Deed

The document itself is short, which is part of why people underestimate it. It has to identify the grantor and grantee correctly, state the consideration, and describe the property by its legal description — the metes and bounds or lot-and-block description from the existing deed, not the mailing address. A deed carrying only a street address is a deed that may not have conveyed anything.

Alabama requires the grantor’s signature to be attested by a witness or acknowledged before a notary. In practice every deed we prepare is notarized, because a notarized deed is accepted everywhere and an attested one occasionally invites questions. The grantee does not sign.

Recording happens in the probate office of the county where the land is located — not the county where the divorce was filed, and not the county where either party lives. Property in two counties needs recording in both. Until the deed is recorded it is valid between the parties but does not protect the grantee against third parties who deal with the property, which is why a signed deed sitting in a drawer is a live risk rather than a completed transfer.

One point of caution about doing this yourself with a form from the internet. The two failures we are asked to fix are a wrong or incomplete legal description, and a deed that was properly signed and then never recorded. Both are correctable, and both are more expensive to correct than to have done right, particularly once a sale is pending and a closing date is on the calendar.

The Due-on-Sale Clause Cannot Be Used Against a Divorce Transfer

Nearly every mortgage contains a due-on-sale clause letting the lender call the entire loan balance immediately if the property is transferred. Read literally, that would mean a quit claim deed between divorcing spouses could trigger a demand for the full payoff — and it is a real worry people raise in consultations.

Federal law forecloses it. The Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act, at 12 U.S.C. § 1701j-3(d)(7), prohibits a lender from exercising a due-on-sale clause where the transfer results from a decree of dissolution of marriage, a legal separation agreement, or an incidental property settlement agreement under which the spouse becomes an owner of the property. Related paragraphs of the same subsection cover transfers to a spouse or child and transfers on death, which is why a deed between spouses in a divorce is not an event a lender can accelerate on.

What the protection does not do is more important than what it does. It stops the lender from calling the loan. It does not release the departing spouse from liability, does not remove them from the note, and does not convert the loan into the keeping spouse’s obligation alone. The debt is untouched. Garn-St Germain buys time and removes one specific fear; it is not a substitute for refinancing.

The practical value is that a keeping spouse who cannot qualify to refinance right now — a stay-at-home parent rebuilding an income history, someone whose credit needs a year to recover — is not forced into an immediate sale. The loan can stay where it is while they get into position, provided the decree sets a real deadline and a real consequence. That is a workable plan. Leaving it open-ended is not.

How We Handle a Post-Divorce Deed

Most deeds are drafted, signed, and recorded within a couple of weeks. The waiting is usually on a refinance, not on us.

Quit Claim Deed Fees

If your divorce is still pending and we are handling it, the deed is quoted alongside the rest of the work rather than as a separate matter. Where the property transfer is part of an agreed uncontested divorce, the settlement terms are inside that flat fee and the deed remains its own flat-fee item.

Frequently Asked Questions About Quit Claim Deeds in Alabama

Four Offices Serving All of Alabama

We prepare and record deeds in every Alabama county, and we coordinate signing for spouses who have already moved out of state.

Talk to an Alabama Property Deed Attorney

Have your decree and the property address ready. If there is a mortgage still in both names, say so at the start — that is usually the part that needs solving first.