Four attempts, no law
Tennessee has never adopted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act, the framework a majority of other states have used to create their own version of this tool. It isn't for lack of trying: bills to enact a "Tennessee Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act" were introduced in 2017, 2018, 2021, and again in the 2025-2026 legislative session — each one died in committee without reaching a final floor vote.
The code itself confirms it
There's a simple, checkable way to confirm this hasn't changed: Title 31 of the Tennessee Code — the title that would house a real-estate TOD deed law — stops at chapter 7. There's no chapter 8, which is the specific number every one of the failed bills has proposed to create. As long as that gap exists, no TOD deed statute for real estate has passed.
No Lady Bird deed either
Some states without a formal TOD deed statute still offer owners a similar result through an enhanced life estate deed, often called a Lady Bird deed — letting the owner keep full control, including the power to sell, while still passing the property to a named beneficiary at death, outside probate. Tennessee doesn't recognize this form of deed either, so it isn't a workaround here.
What Tennessee homeowners use instead
Without a TOD deed or a Lady Bird deed, Tennessee real estate stays out of probate through one of a few established tools: a deed that expressly creates a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, tenancy by the entirety for a married couple, a traditional life estate deed — which is generally irrevocable once signed, unlike the other options here — or transferring the property into a revocable living trust during life.
A deed from another state won't help
Real property follows the law of the state where it's located. A transfer-on-death or beneficiary deed that's valid in a state like Arizona or Ohio has no legal effect on a house in Tennessee — the property is still governed entirely by Tennessee's own rules, which simply don't recognize that instrument. Anyone who owned property in a TOD-deed state and later relocated needs a Tennessee-specific plan for that asset.