You may already own property with someone else in Georgia. You may not know which kind of ownership your deed created. That is normal. Most people sign a deed at closing. They never look at the exact words again. Finding out you might have the wrong one for your family does not mean you did something wrong. It usually just means nobody explained the difference at the time.
Tenants in Common: Georgia’s Default
Tenants in common is what Georgia law creates automatically. This happens when two or more people are listed as owners on a deed. It happens unless the deed uses specific survivorship words. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-6-120, this is Georgia’s default rule for shared ownership.
Owners do not have to hold equal shares. Georgia law assumes the shares are equal unless the deed says otherwise. Two siblings could own a house 50/50. Or one could hold 75% and the other 25%. It depends on what the deed says.
Every owner can use and access the whole property. This is true no matter how small their share is. A tenant in common who owns 10% of a house can still live in every room of it. The percentage sets ownership value and profit sharing. It does not set which rooms someone can use.
This form has no right of survivorship. When an owner dies, their share does not pass to the other owners on its own. It passes through their will. If they never wrote a will, it passes through Georgia’s intestacy law instead.
Joint Tenancy With Right of Survivorship: The Alternative You Have to Choose
Joint tenancy with right of survivorship is often called JTWROS. It is Georgia’s other form of co-ownership. Unlike tenants in common, it does not happen on its own. Under O.C.G.A. § 44-6-190(a)(2), Georgia treats the deed as creating survivorship if it calls the owners “joint tenants,” “joint tenants and not as tenants in common,” “joint tenants with survivorship,” “jointly with survivorship,” or wording essentially the same as one of those. The deed does not have to spell out “with right of survivorship” word for word.
The biggest benefit shows up at death. When one joint tenant dies, their share passes straight to the surviving owner. This happens on its own. The property does not go through probate for that share. The survivor simply keeps the property once a death certificate is recorded with the county.
How to Tell Which One You Have
Most Georgia homeowners have never read their own deed closely. Most do not know which form of ownership they actually have. You can check in a few minutes.
1
Find Your Current Deed
Look up your property on your county’s Clerk of Superior Court website. Or ask your closing attorney or title company for a copy of your recorded deed.
2
Read the Exact Ownership Words
Look for words like “joint tenants,” “joint tenants and not as tenants in common,” “joint tenants with survivorship,” or “jointly with survivorship.” Any one of those, or wording essentially the same, is enough on its own. The deed does not have to add “with right of survivorship” too. If none of those words or something close to them appear, Georgia law almost always treats you as tenants in common instead. This is true even if you and your co-owner always assumed otherwise.
What Happens When an Owner Dies
The biggest real-world difference between these two forms shows up the moment one owner dies.
A tenants in common share becomes part of that owner’s probate estate. In Georgia, a simple estate spends about 13 months in probate.
It costs a family about $14,700 on average. That number does not include a will contest, a missing will, or a fight among heirs about what to do with the property.
A joint tenancy share skips probate for the surviving owners. Filing a certified copy of the death certificate with the county is usually enough to update the record. The surviving owner or owners keep the property. There is no probate case for that share. For a full breakdown of how this form of ownership works in Georgia, see our guide to joint tenancy with right of survivorship.
This is also the moment tenants in common can create a new co-owner nobody chose. Say a parent leaves their share of a house to three adult children in a will. Now all three children own a piece of the property. They own it alongside whoever the parent’s original co-owner was, even if that person is a stranger to them.
Taxes work differently depending on the form, too. When a co-owner dies, the portion of the property that passed from them usually gets a step-up in tax basis, which can reduce capital gains tax if the property is sold later. How much of the property gets that step-up depends on which form you had and who owned what share. Our guide to JTWROS vs. a revocable trust in Georgia walks through this in more detail.
Creditors and Forced Sales
Either form of co-ownership can end up in front of a judge if the owners cannot agree. Any tenant in common, and any joint tenant while the other owner is alive, can file what Georgia law calls a partition action. This is a lawsuit that asks the court to split the property, or to order it sold.
A forced partition sale rarely brings full value. In the firm’s experience, a court-ordered sale often brings less than a normal market sale would. The sale happens on the court’s schedule, not the owners’ schedule. Buyers know the sellers cannot wait for a better offer.
Creditors add another risk. A creditor who wins a judgment against one owner can usually only reach that owner’s own share. This is true whether the property is held as tenants in common or joint tenancy. But that creditor can still force a partition sale to collect. That puts every owner’s home at risk over one person’s debt. Our guide on what happens when a joint tenant has creditors in Georgia covers this risk in more detail.
A joint tenant can also end the survivorship right alone, without asking the other owner. They just record a deed that moves their own share to themselves as tenants in common. Once that happens, the property is tenants in common going forward. The automatic survivorship right is gone.
Changing From One to the Other in Georgia
Georgia does not let you change how a deed is held with a phone call to a title company or a bank. A new deed has to be written, signed by every owner, notarized, and recorded with the Clerk of Superior Court in the county where the property sits.
Before you file a new deed, know what it can trigger. Adding or removing an owner is not just paperwork. If there is still a mortgage on the property, the lender’s due-on-sale clause can let it call the loan due in full. Adding someone who doesn’t pay for their new share can count as a gift under federal gift tax rules, which can mean filing a gift tax return even when no tax is owed. And changing the deed can affect your existing title insurance coverage. None of these make the change impossible. They just mean the new deed should go through a closing attorney or title company, not a form pulled off the internet.
1
Pull the Current Deed and Legal Description
Get a copy of the recorded deed from the county Clerk of Superior Court. You need the exact legal description to write a new deed for the same property.
2
Decide the New Form of Ownership
Talk with every owner. Decide if the goal is joint tenancy with survivorship, or something else, such as moving the property into a trust instead.
3
Prepare and Sign the New Deed
A Georgia attorney writes a new deed with the correct ownership words. Every current owner has to sign. Every signature has to be notarized.
4
File the Deed and the PT-61 Form
Georgia requires a PT-61 Real Estate Transfer Tax form with most deed changes. The new ownership is not official until the deed is recorded with the county.
Divorce is the one exception to this rule. Say a married couple set up a joint tenancy with right of survivorship. They later divorce. Either ex-spouse can end the survivorship right alone under O.C.G.A. § 44-6-190(a)(4). They do not need the other ex-spouse to agree. To do it, Georgia law lets them file an affidavit in the county’s real property records. The affidavit states the divorce or annulment. It comes with a copy of the final court order. No new deed is required.
Why Neither Form Replaces a Trust
Joint tenancy and tenants in common both leave gaps. A revocable trust closes those gaps.
Neither form helps if an owner becomes unable to make decisions instead of dying. Say a tenant in common or a joint tenant has a stroke or gets dementia. They cannot sign papers to sell, refinance, or manage their share. The other owners are stuck. A court has to appoint someone to act for them, and that is a slow, public process.
Joint tenancy also only solves the problem once. It moves a share to the surviving co-owner on its own. But it does not say what happens after that person dies too. It does not protect the property if that survivor remarries, runs into debt, or needs Medicaid later in life.
A revocable trust holds the property under terms you set. It avoids probate the same way joint tenancy does for the first death. It keeps working the right way after every original owner is gone. If tenants in common is what you currently have, see how it compares directly to a trust in our guide to tenants in common vs. a trust in Georgia. If you are not sure your current deed still fits your family, a conversation with an attorney is the fastest way to find out.
