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How to eSign a document: e-signature licitness for Quitclaim Deed

- Hey there, this is Seth from the REtipster blog, and in this video, I just wanna give you a really quick overview of what a quitclaim deed is, when it makes sense to use it, and how you can put one together, if that's something you wanna do. (instrumental jingle) So a quitclaim deed is essentially a document that is used to transfer the ownership of real estate from one person or entity to another person or entity. And most of the time when people are buying houses and rental properties and other investments, the most common type of deed that people use is called a warranty deed, and that's a deed where the seller is essentially promising that they have totally free and clear title to the property, and they are conveying it to that new buyer, and there's no title defects on record, so nobody else has any ownership, any liens on the property, or anything that would encroach their totally-unencumbered ownership of that particular property. In the vast majority of cases, when people are using warranty deeds, there's also a title insurance policy involved, so essentially, there's a third party who has reviewed the entire title history, and they're willing to back up the fact that the title is indeed free and clear, and there's no encroachments or issues on that. And that's why a lot of times, sellers are comfortable making that promise, because there's a title company that's gonna back them up if any mistakes were made. With a quitclaim deed, the seller's not making any promises or guarantees of any kind regarding the title. They're essentially just saying, "Everything that I own of this property, if anything, "I'm now transferring to you, Mr. Buyer." So essentially, if you as the seller have no idea if the title is clear or not, this is the kind of deed that you would most likely wanna use, because you don't have to make any promises as to whether or not there are any issues that have come up in the past. A lot of times, people use quitclaim deeds when they're transferring properties between family members, or in divorce situations, when one person is gonna relinquish their ownership to the other person, that's usually the kind of situation when quitclaim deeds get involved, or in cases where the seller literally has no idea what's going on in the title history, and they're not getting a title insurance policy, and they're not making any guarantees, and usually, as a result, the buyer is paying a very, very low prince, and/or, they've done their own title research to verify that that title is free and clear. So using quitclaim deeds, a lot of times, title companies really don't like that, because it basically opens up this can of worms, in a sense, showing that, hey, somebody sold this property without making any promises, so it is actually possible for that to cause issues in the future, in the title, even if it didn't actually create a cloud on the title, a lot of times, title companies and underwriters will look at that as an issue, simply because there was no promise made in that transfer, so, that's just something to keep in mind. But really, a quitclaim deed is a very, very simple document, and it's just saying that whatever person A owns of the property, they're now transferring to person B. Just to give you an idea for how loose a quitclaim deed actually is, I can fill out a quitclaim deed for a property that I don't own, and convey it to somebody else, because I'm not making any promises, I'm just saying that everything I own of that property, if anything, even if it's nothing, I am transferring to this other person. So hopefully that gives you an idea of what a quitclaim deed really means, and what kind of situations it may or may not be appropriate in. And if you're looking for a state-specific quitclaim deed template that you can use to fill our for yourself, there's actually all kinds of websites out there where you can pay to download templates, and just fill in the blanks yourself and do it that way. There's another website that I've using lately called Rocket Lawyer, and they have a very, very nice, easy-to-use system, where you literally just fill out a questionnaire and fill in the blanks, and it generates the document for you. So if that's something you wanna use, I just wanna give you a really quick tour of how that works, and just how easy it is, you definitely don't have to use it, and again, I'm not saying if and when you should be using a quitclaim deed at all. That's something you should probably talk to an attorney about, if you have any questions about the appropriateness of this particular type of deed, but if you know this is what you wanna use, and you're just looking for the easiest way to fill one out, I just wanna show you how Rocket Lawyer works, and you can decide for yourself if this is the route you wanna go. So follow along with me, and I will create a quitclaim deed for ya in just the next few minutes, and you can see what I'm talking about, it's a really nice, easy-to-use tool, so, let's go check it out. Okay, so I'm actually gonna include a link to this exact page beneath this video, so if you wanna follow along with me and fill out a quitclaim deed for yourself with your own property-specific information, you can feel free to do that. Once you click on that link, it'll take you to this exact page, it should look something like this, and all you have to do is start off by picking the state in which your property is located, so in this example, I'm just gonna click California, and then we'll click make document. Then the first question it asks us is, what is the location of the property being granted? So if we got an address, we would just go ahead and put that address in here, so I'll just make up a fictitious one here, we'll click continue, and who is preparing this quitclaim deed? Since I'm the one preparing it, I'm just gonna go ahead and put my name in here, once I got the information, I'll go ahead and click continue. And then, is this property located in an unincorporated area? Basically, what this means is, if your property is located within the boundaries of a city or a township or a parish or anything that has an organized, structured government to it, then your answer would be no. But if it happens to be a property that's way out in the middle of nowhere, and there's no municipal body that's overseeing that, in that case, you would click yes, and that's gonna be fairly rare, depending on where your property is, so in this case, I'm just gonna go ahead and leave it as no and click continue. And then, who is granting the property? In this situation, I'm gonna say that I personally am selling this property to somebody else, so I will just leave it as an individual person. If you want it to include a business or a trust or any of these other options, you could just click those as well, and based on which one you pick, it will ask you more scenario-specific questions throughout the rest of this. Sort of changes based on how you answer these questions. Click continue again. And then, what is the grantor's name? I'll just put my name here. And then, is Seth Williams married? I will say yes, I am. And then also keep in mind, as you're going through this, if you ever have any questions, or get stuck, like, say you just don't understand how to fill it out, it's really, really easy to just go ahead and ask a question right there, and Rocket Lawyer will actually shoot that to a lawyer, and they will respond to you and help answer your question, so that's really a nice thing, you're not necessarily on your own when you're filling this out. You get stuck, you can get help. And then also, if, for instance, you don't have all the information yet, it's still possible to create this document, and just simply skip certain items, so, let's just say, for example, we're gonna skip this one, and what it's gonna do is, in the end result, when it creates this document, it's just gonna have blanks there, so we can sorta fill those in by hand, or edit the final Word document when we do get that information, so, just keep that in mind, you don't necessarily have to be equipped with 100% of the information in order to complete this process. So let's just skip this one and move on. And then, where will Seth Williams sign the quitclaim deed? I'm gonna say I'm gonna sign this in Michigan, in Kent County, and the reason this is asking that is so that it helps us fill out the notary block, when the deed gets notarized. Click continue, and then grantors. Based on the dowry laws, which can vary by state, some states require that, say, if I owned a property, and it was just in my name, but I happen to be married, my wife basically automatically has ownership in that property, just by the fact that she's married to me, so she would have to sign this as well in the transfer process, even though it was never really titled in her name, so, part of this, you'll have to understand what the laws are in your state, based on whether or not you need to do that, in this case, just to keep it simple, I'm going to just leave it as me, but that's just something to be aware of. If you are in that kind of situation, you may be required to get the spouse's signature as well, if the state laws require that, so just keep that in mind. And then, who is being granted the property? We're just gonna say we're granting this to an individual, and that grantee's name is, we're gonna say, John Smith. And then, is John Smith single or married? We'll say that he's single. And what is the physical street address of the grantee? We'll just make something up here, and continue. And then, when will the transfer take effect? I'll just put January 1, 2017, that'll be our closing date, and then, what is the tax or assessor's parcel number? This is something that you can either find on the previous deed of record, or you can usually find it on the county's website, or if you subscribe to any kind of real estate data service like AgentPro247, or RealQuest, or anything like that, you can usually find those numbers there, so, I'm just gonna make up a number here, and then we'll click continue. Then what's the legal description? Just like the previous item, you can usually find this on the county's website, or on the previous deed of record, if you have any questions on that, so I'll just make something up here. So once that's done, we'll click continue again. And then, is money being exchanged for the transfer of the property? Now, a lot of times, when people use quitclaim deeds, say, if they're transferring it between family members, in those situations, it's not uncommon for no money to be changing hands, or a very, very small amount, so you could put, like $1, like it says here in this example. Or if it's a lot more than that, then obviously, you would just put whatever that amount is. In this case, we'll say yes, and we'll say, $100. And then, what is the name and address of the person receiving future tax statements for the property? So in this case, we're just gonna put that same buyer's address, 'cause he's gonna be the person paying those tax bills going forward. Go ahead and click continue here, and then check the box next to any statement applying to this deed. So this is an area where Rocket Lawyer gets into some of the state-specific issues that can come up in California, and this is something that you wouldn't necessarily know if you were just working with some generic template, so that's one of the areas where Rocket Lawyer's kinda nice to work with. So, if any of these would apply, just go ahead and read through them and check anything that's applicable, if not, you just leave it as none of the above and click continue. And then, what is the value of the property being transferred? We're gonna get, just say, $100 again. If you had gotten an appraisal on the property and you got a specific value, you could put that here, or if you had a specific assessed value in mind from the county, you could put that here as well. If you don't have any of that information, then you could literally just put the amount that's being paid, and that would work, too. And then, is the grantee assuming any debts attached to the property? In this case, we're gonna go ahead and say no, click continue. And does the grantor wish to reserve any interest in the property's oil, gas or other mineral rights? I'm gonna say no in this case, but if, for some reason, you wanted to hold those back, you could do that here. Does the grantor wish to reserve a life estate interest in the property being transferred? I'm gonna say no in this case. And keep in mind, all of these questions, as you've probably seen, have a pretty good explanation just explaining what it means, and how you may or may not wanna answer some of these questions, and again, keep in mind, if you get stuck on anything, you can always just ask a question over here. And then, who should the original deed of the property be returned to? In this case, I would usually put the name of the buyer because they're gonna be the owner going forward, and this is something that they're probably gonna want for their record, so you go ahead and put that in there. And then it will go ahead and generate this document for us, as you can see, all you gotta do, just scroll through here, and it shows you the exact document, and you can download this in the form of a PDF, or as a Word documents, that's usually what I would do, but that's just me, 'cause I can edit it in the future, and do other things if I wanna change it around. And then when we open this up, we can go ahead and just get a good view of it, and we can go through here and edit things if we want, we can highlight and delete things, we can change things around if we need to, and something you'll notice here, right here, we've got a bunch of blanks, this was that question where I just chose to skip it rather than filling out the information, so that's what happens when you don't answer all the questions, that'll just leave those blanks, and then you can either hand-write them in, or go ahead and type that information in once you have the Word document. And then this is the notary block, it's really just very simple and straightforward and easy to do. And that's what really what I like about Rocket Lawyer, is that it just makes the process very easy, whereas, when you're using a blank template, it's kinda up to you to make sure you're filling out all the details and not missing anything, which I found is actually surprisingly easy to do, especially when you're not familiar with deeds and you don't do this on a regular basis, or even when you do, this kind of thing requires a lot of attention to detail to make sure you get all the information right and don't miss anything. So, if you're interested in Rocket Lawyer, there are a couple different pricing plans, and it's set up as a subscription, you can either do it monthly, this is the one that I've got right now, the $39.95 per month, or if you pay annually, you can save 20% on that, if this is something that you know you're gonna be using again and again. And keep in mind, if you just need one document one time and that's it, you're never gonna need this again, it's totally feasible to just sign up for one month, and then unsubscribe. And then, if you ever need to come back, it's very easy to do that. That cost for one month is pretty comparable to the cost you're gonna find for a lot of the blank templates out there that are harder to fill out anyway, so it's not like it's a worse deal, necessarily, than some of the less user-friendly options out there. And again, in terms of the appropriateness of using a quitclaim deed, I can't answer that question for you, because I don't know anything about your situation, that's something where if you're not sure about it, you would have to talk to an attorney and verify that you're working with all the right information and all the right language, 'cause there are some cases where there is some even more specific things that should be included in a deed, and Rocket Lawyer may not necessarily be able to do that, so I'm not saying that you should not get legal help, because you should, if you need that, but, if you're just looking for a quick, easy, boilerplate, no-frills kind of approach to creating this kind of document for the least amount of money, I think Rocket Lawyer is a great way to do that, and I've been using it in many, many cases, and I found it to be a very viable solution, in not all, but in many situations that I've worked with, so, there's Rocket Lawyer for ya, that's how you can do a quitclaim deed with them, hopefully you find that helpful on some level, I'm gonna have an affiliate link beneath this video, and if you sign up through that link, I will get a small commission on that, so just wanna totally disclose that, and again, Rocket Lawyer's not the perfect fit for everybody, but I think, in a lot of cases, it can be a great option for people who just need a quick, simple, easy, user-friendly way to get this kind of thing done, so, thanks for watching, and hopefully I'll see you again soon!