Q: I have joint tenancy with mom on a townhome in Maryland. I want to remove my mom from the title and replace with my wife

A: The answer with the least legal expense is to sell or gift your mother's half of the house to your wife. There will be transfer taxes, it may be a recognition event as to capital gains, and you will need to refinance. The alternative is to review the mortgage and find out if it has a due on sale clause and whether the lender will waive it. If so, you can probably do the same transfer with a quitclaim deed, but it may have the same consequences as above. Basically, your mother is giving her half of the house to your wife, and there may be no way around that fact.

A: The situation you describe comes up quite frequently (where someone owns property with their mom and/or dad, gets married and wants to hold the property together with their spouse).

There are 3 different state and county-level transfer taxes that come into play with real property transfers. Although another attorney's post correctly stated the GENERAL rules for transfers, it failed to note exceptions that should apply in the situation you posted. Maryland law exempts a parent/child deed from 2 of these transfer & recordation taxes. With respect to the third tax, some counties will impose COUNTY transfer tax on a parent/child deed so whether removing your mom from title would involve transfer taxes depends on the specific MD county. So an attorney would need to know what county the property was in before giving a clear answer on possible transfer taxes.

In the ordinary course one cannot add or remove people from title without getting the lender's consent when there is a mortgage. If the lender won't consent to an assumption it requires a refinance. However, when a parent is giving a home to their child or when a husband adds his wife to title (or vice-versa) a federal law called the Garn St. Germain Act typically avoids any need to refinance. *note that a child giving their parent property is not covered.

Depending on the equity in the property, the parent/child transfer may require filing of a gift tax return.

While not legal advice, I hope this post helps! You're strongly encouraged to reach out to an attorney who regularly handles such deeds to get legal advice specific to your situation.