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By Nashville Indiana Title Company
Do You Draft Your Own Deed or Does the Title Company? Somewhere between signing the purchase agreement and getting the keys, a deed has to be prepared. ...
Somewhere between signing the purchase agreement and getting the keys, a deed has to be prepared. If you are buying a cabin near the state park or a lot out toward Bean Blossom, you might wonder whose job that actually is. Short version: in most Indiana closings, a title company or an attorney prepares the deed, not the buyer or seller. Here is how it really works.
The deed is the document that transfers ownership from the current owner to you. Because it moves the property out of the seller's name, the deed is traditionally the seller's responsibility to provide at closing. But "the seller's responsibility" almost never means the seller sits down and drafts it themselves.
In a typical Brown County transaction, the deed gets prepared by the title company handling the closing or by a real estate attorney. We see the seller's existing deed, we pull the legal description from the county records, we confirm the exact vesting, and we prepare the new deed for the seller to sign. The seller shows up, signs in front of a notary, and that is their part done.
So if you are the buyer, you are not drafting anything. And if you are the seller, you are signing a deed that was prepared for you, not writing one from scratch.
Yes. Indiana does not require an attorney or a title company to prepare a deed. A property owner can technically write or fill out a deed and record it themselves at the Brown County Recorder's office. People do it all the time for simple family transfers, like adding a spouse to a title or gifting land to an adult child.
But there is a big difference between "legally allowed" and "a good idea in a real sale." A deed is short, but every word on it does work. The legal description has to match the surveyed parcel exactly. The names have to be spelled the way they appear on the current deed. The right deed type has to be used. Get any of that wrong and you have a cloud on the title that surfaces later, usually at the worst possible moment... when the new owner tries to sell or refinance and the search turns up a problem.
That is the whole reason title work exists. We would rather catch the issue before you own it than have you discover it years down the road.
A subdivision lot in Indianapolis has a clean, boxy legal description. Lot 14, Block 3, in such-and-such platted subdivision. Easy to copy, hard to mess up.
Brown County property is a different animal. A wooded ten-acre tract out past Gnaw Bone might have a legal description that references a metes-and-bounds survey with bearings and distances, an old fence line, or a point that ties back to a section corner nobody has walked to in decades. The deed might mention a shared driveway easement or a right of way to reach the county road. Some older parcels reference features that shifted over time, like a creek bed near Salt Creek that does not sit quite where it did when the description was written.
None of that is a problem. It is just Brown County, and it is exactly the kind of thing you want prepared by people who read these descriptions every week. When we draft the deed, we carry that legal description forward carefully so the parcel you think you are buying is the parcel the deed actually conveys.
Part of preparing the deed is choosing the right kind. In a standard sale, you almost always want a warranty deed, which is the seller promising they hold clean title and will stand behind it. That is the strongest protection a buyer can get in the deed itself, and it pairs with your owner's title insurance policy.
Other deed types show up in other situations. A quitclaim deed transfers only whatever interest the person happens to have, with no promises, which is why it fits family transfers and divorces but not arm's-length sales. A transfer on death deed lets an owner name who inherits the property without probate. Each one has a specific job. Choosing the wrong type is one of the quiet errors that surfaces in a title search years later, and it is a big reason we do not recommend the DIY route for an actual purchase.
Drafting the deed is one piece of a larger process. Before we prepare it, we run a title search to confirm the seller actually owns what they are selling and to surface any liens, easements, or judgments attached to the property. After you sign, we handle recording the deed with the Brown County Recorder's office, which is what makes your ownership official in the public record.
Recording matters. A signed deed sitting in a drawer does not fully protect you. Indiana follows a recording system, and getting the deed into the county records in the proper order is part of what a closing is for. If you want to read more about how deeds and property transfers are treated at the federal level for reporting purposes, the IRS overview of home sale reporting is a solid starting point, though the recording itself happens right here at the local courthouse.
For a normal purchase, let the title company or an attorney prepare the deed. It is folded into the closing, it costs you very little on its own, and it means the legal description, the names, and the deed type are handled by people who do this all day.
Save the do-it-yourself deed for the simple stuff, and even then, it is worth a quick call before you record anything. We have been closing Brown County transactions for years, from cottages on the square to acreage in the hills, and the deed is the part we least want anyone guessing on. Ask us. We would rather answer the question now than fix a title problem later.