A relatively late adoption, July 2020
Until recently, Mississippi law simply didn't recognize transfer-on-death deeds. That changed with the passage of Senate Bill 2851, signed into law by Governor Reeves on June 29, 2020, and effective July 1, 2020. The resulting Mississippi Real Property Transfer-on-Death Act, codified at Miss. Code §§ 91-27-1 through 91-27-37, gave Mississippi property owners this tool for the first time — making Mississippi one of the more recent states to adopt this kind of deed, well behind many states that had offered similar options for a decade or more.
Simple execution: notary only
The transferor must have capacity to execute the deed, and it must be executed and acknowledged before a notary public. Mississippi does not require witnesses, keeping the signing process relatively straightforward. The deed must then be recorded with the chancery clerk in the county where the property is located before the owner's death, or it has no effect.
Revocation: recorded instrument only, not a will or an act on the deed
The deed is revocable until death, either by recording a revocation instrument or by recording a later TOD deed — both must be acknowledged and recorded before death. It cannot be revoked by an act performed on the deed itself, and it cannot be revoked by a will. A lifetime conveyance of the property to someone else voids the TOD deed automatically, since the transferor no longer owns anything for the deed to transfer at death.
Divorce automatically revokes a gift to a former spouse
Mississippi's statute includes a built-in protection many people wouldn't think to ask for: a divorce automatically revokes the gift to a former spouse named as beneficiary on a TOD deed. This mirrors how divorce commonly revokes a gift to a former spouse under a will, extending the same basic protection to this newer estate-planning tool without requiring the property owner to remember to update the deed themselves after a divorce.
No automatic backup — except among the other named beneficiaries
A named beneficiary must survive the transferor, or the gift lapses. Where the deed names multiple beneficiaries, they take equal undivided shares by default, and if one beneficiary dies before the transferor, that lapsed share passes to the other surviving beneficiaries rather than to the deceased beneficiary's own heirs. This is a meaningful default worth understanding: someone who wants a lapsed share to go to a specific alternate person, rather than simply enlarging the remaining beneficiaries' shares, needs to spell that out explicitly in the deed.
An attorney-in-fact can sign it
A duly appointed attorney-in-fact can execute a transfer-on-death deed under a power of attorney, as long as that power of attorney specifically grants the authority to execute deeds. This gives families a practical option when the property owner is unable to sign documents themselves, as long as the underlying power of attorney was drafted broadly enough to cover this kind of transaction.
Joint ownership still comes first
A joint owner's right of survivorship prevails over a beneficiary named in a TOD deed, unless the deed specifically states that it severs the joint tenancy. If the transferor is a joint owner and dies before the other joint owner, the surviving joint owner takes the property, and the TOD deed simply has no effect for that property. See our guide to Mississippi joint tenancy and tenancy by the entirety for how that underlying co-ownership question gets decided.