No entirety, express language required
Alabama does not recognize tenancy by the entirety at all. A deed to a husband and wife creates an ordinary tenancy in common by default — treated exactly the same as a deed to any other pair of unrelated co-owners. Under Ala. Code § 35-4-7, survivorship has to be expressly created: the instrument must clearly state the grantees take the property jointly with a right of survivorship. Without that language, the property defaults to tenancy in common, with no survivorship, and each co-owner's share goes through probate separately.
A 1945 revival, then eight years of confusion
Alabama's modern survivorship joint tenancy traces back to a 1945 legislative amendment that revived the concept after it had fallen out of favor. What followed was a genuinely turbulent period in Alabama property law: an earlier Alabama Supreme Court decision made survivorship interests nearly impossible to sever unilaterally, and for roughly eight years, attorneys across the state wrote deeds relying on that stricter understanding of how joint tenancy worked.
The case that reversed course
In Nunn v. Keith (1972), the Alabama Supreme Court restored traditional common-law joint tenancy rules — meaning a joint tenant's later conveyance of their own interest can sever the joint tenancy, just as it would under ordinary common law. This decision directly rejected the stricter, nearly-unbreakable approach that had governed for the prior eight years, and the shift created real consternation among lawyers who'd drafted deeds under the old assumption.
What actually happened in the case
The facts themselves illustrate the principle well. A grandfather, his first wife, and their grandson had received property together as survivorship joint tenants. After the wife died, the grandfather conveyed his own interest in the property to himself and his new wife — a self-conveyance meant to bring the new wife into the ownership picture. The court held that this conveyance severed the original joint tenancy as to the grandfather's share, leaving the new wife and the grandson as tenants in common rather than joint tenants with survivorship between them. A dissenting justice in the case specifically worried about exactly this kind of outcome — a unilateral act by one owner quietly changing what the other owners would ultimately receive.
The practical lesson for Alabama co-owners today
Nunn v. Keith remains the governing rule: clear survivorship language creates a genuine joint tenancy, but that joint tenancy can still be broken by one owner's later conveyance of their own share — even a conveyance to themselves in a new capacity, as happened in the case itself. Anyone counting on a joint tenancy staying intact until death should understand that a co-owner retains the power to unilaterally end that arrangement during their own lifetime.
A different route for real estate
Joint tenancy isn't the only way to think about keeping Alabama real estate out of probate. See our guide to why Alabama has no transfer-on-death deed for what the state offers instead.