Noreen Schatzberg looked at it for about twenty seconds and said, “Well.

That’s that, then.”

Here is what a transfer on death designation affidavit is.

It is an Ohio instrument and most states have some version of it, and it does for real property what a payable-on-death designation does for a bank account.

You record it while you are alive.

It changes nothing while you are alive — you still own your house, you can sell it, mortgage it, give it away, or revoke the affidavit entirely, and the beneficiary has no rights of any kind and does not even have to be told.

And at the moment you die, the property passes to the named beneficiary automatically.