Life Estate Deed

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Maryland

In 2001, my mother created a life estate deed and deeded her house to my sister and myself. My mother passed away last year, and my sister and I still have the house. The insurance company is now refusing to continue to insure the house now that my mother is no longer living.

What do I need to do? Do I need to do a deed to remove my mother's name?What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)?

Go to an insurance company who will insure a vacant house. It will cost a little more.

Life estate deed

Hi. Perhaps I wasn't clear on my question. The house is not vacant. The company will not insure us because there is a deceased person on the title. What do I need to do? Thanks.

You can either get an attorney to re-do the deed as the life estate has ended, or you can find another insurance company. I have not heard of this being a problem before so it may be the agent is a little bit inexperienced. (But then, I don't deal with a lot of life estate deeds when administering an estate so could be wrong.)

the deed creating the life estate and moms death cert should be adequate proof mom no longer holds any interest.


What I would do is contact whomever maintains the deeds for your area and ask them how a record of death would become associated with the property's chain of title. Transferring from yourself to yourself seem unnecessary and to me, a bit of an odd undertaking as you would not be actually deeding anything to anybody other than what is already existing.

I agree with justalayman. I only threw it out there as a way to fix the "problem".

Life estate deed

Thanks very much for your responses. I thought I just had to take the certified death certificate to the Land records department of the Circuit Court, which I did. They said they couldn't take death certificates and that I would have to do a new deed. They told me to go to Staples and get a new deed, get it notarized, and bring it in. I'm not sure what type of deed to get. Any other thoughts would be greatly appreciated.