No real-property TOD deed — yet
South Carolina has never adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act. As of this review, there's no statutory mechanism to record a beneficiary designation on real estate that automatically transfers the property at death, outside of probate. That said, South Carolina currently has two separate bills pending that would each address this gap in a different way.
Bill one: an affidavit-based TOD designation
Introduced January 14, 2025, S.49 would add Section 27-1-80 to the South Carolina Code, letting both sole owners and joint owners with a right of survivorship designate a TOD beneficiary. What's distinctive here is the mechanism: rather than a formal "deed," the bill uses an affidavit. Any affidavit containing language showing a clear intent to designate a TOD beneficiary would have to be liberally construed to do so, and once recorded with the county Register of Deeds, that affidavit would serve as conclusive evidence of the designation — a notably permissive standard designed to make the mechanism forgiving of imperfect drafting.
Bill two: a separate Lady Bird deed act
Introduced March 27, 2025, H.4264 — titled the "South Carolina Enhanced Life Estate Deed Act" — proposes an entirely different mechanism: a Lady Bird-style enhanced life estate deed, the same basic concept Florida and Michigan already recognize at common law. This bill is genuinely separate from S.49; South Carolina lawmakers are considering two distinct paths to the same underlying goal, rather than settling on one unified approach.
Personal property already has TOD registration
While real estate waits, South Carolina has already moved on personal property. Effective around 2024-2025, titled personal property — vehicles, mobile homes, and watercraft — can carry a TOD designation through the Department of Motor Vehicles. This designation expressly does not reach real property; it's a completely separate statutory track that happens to have moved faster than the real-estate version.
A distinctive naming convention for joint personal property
For jointly owned personal property carrying a TOD designation, South Carolina practice relies on a simple naming convention: the designation works only if there's a right of survivorship, and using the word "OR" between owners' names on the title indicates that survivorship right, while "AND" denotes separate ownership shares with no automatic inheritance between the co-owners. Getting this single word wrong on a title can change what happens to the property entirely.
Securities already have their own mechanism too
South Carolina's Uniform TOD Security Registration Act (S.C. Code § 35-6-10 and following) already lets stocks and bonds be registered in TOD form, passing directly to a named beneficiary without probate court involvement — a well-established option, unlike the still-pending real estate mechanisms.
What to watch for
Given that two separate, substantive bills are both actively moving through committee at the same time, it's reasonable to expect South Carolina will eventually adopt some form of non-probate real estate transfer — the open question is which mechanism, or whether both end up passing in some combined form. Until either becomes law, South Carolina real estate owners continue to rely on joint tenancy with the exact statutory wording, a life estate deed, or a revocable living trust.