The other side of the line

Washington

Transfer-on-death deed. RCW ch. 64.80

Montana

Transfer-on-death deed. § 72-6-121

One page, recorded before death. The house never sees a courtroom.

Idaho — Bonner County

Your deed stopsat the state line.

Idaho has no transfer-on-death deed. The instrument your last state handed you does not exist here. Three others do the work — and they are what I have been drawing up in this county for nineteen years.

Book a consultation See what changes at the line

The same family.
The same house.
A different state.

Nothing about the property changes when you cross into Idaho. Everything about what happens to it does. These are the three that catch people.

Washington · Montana · Colorado

A transfer-on-death deed.

Name a beneficiary, record one page before you die, and the house passes without probate. It costs almost nothing.

RCW ch. 64.80 · Mont. Code § 72-6-121
Idaho

No such instrument exists.

Idaho's transfer-on-death statute covers securities, not land. Real estate is carved out by name.

Idaho Code § 15-6-107
The will you already have

Drafted under your old state's law.

It says exactly what you meant it to say, in the state where you signed it.

Common-law property states
Idaho

Half of it may not be yours to give.

Idaho is a community property state. Property you acquired while living elsewhere becomes quasi-community property here — and at death, one half belongs to your surviving spouse before your will is read.

Idaho Code § 15-2-201(b)
Your heirs

One estate. One court.

The probate opens where you lived, and it settles what you owned.

Where you are domiciled
Idaho

A second court, in a second state.

Real property answers to the law of the ground it sits on. An out-of-state probate cannot move title to an Idaho parcel. Your family opens a second one here — with a second lawyer, and a second set of fees.

Ancillary probate
Three routings

Idaho left three ways through.

Every one of them is a way of arranging the boundary so your property is already on the other side of it before a court is ever asked. Pick one and watch the line move.

00 — As it stands

Nothing in place.

The parcel sits on the Idaho side of the line, and the only way across it is a courtroom — here, in this county, opened by your family after you are gone.

The default
01

A property trust.

Title the land into a revocable trust and the trust owns it, not you. At death there is no Idaho parcel in your name — so there is nothing for a court to transfer.

Property trusts · drafted at Snedden Law
02

A family LLC.

Put the land inside a family LLC and you no longer own real estate — you own a membership interest. That is personal property, and it answers to the law of the state you live in, not the state the dirt is in.

Family LLCs · drafted at Snedden Law
03

A survivorship deed.

Idaho lets spouses hold real property as community property with right of survivorship. On the death of one spouse the whole of it transfers to the other. No probate, no court, no delay.

Idaho Code § 15-6-401
OUTSIDE PROBATE IDAHO PROBATE YOUR PARCEL
If nothing is in place

Your family opens a probate where you lived, and then a second one here — a second court, in a second state, with local counsel, a second filing fee, and a second set of court costs. It is the part nobody sees coming.

Field note — Idaho Legislature, 2026
  1. March 17

    Senate Bill 1399 is introduced. It would have enacted the Uniform Real Property Transfer on Death Act in Idaho — the one-page deed that Washington and Montana already have.

  2. March 18

    Reported printed. Referred to Judiciary & Rules. Two lines in the record. Nothing after them.

  3. April 2

    The Legislature adjourns sine die. The bill died in committee.

So it stays this way for at least another year.

Every fact on this page is checkable in an afternoon — the bill's own page on the Legislature's website records exactly two actions, and the session ended eleven weeks ago.

legislature.idaho.gov · S1399 (2026)
Schedule of practice

What comes across this desk.

A transactional practice. Land, the businesses built on it, and what happens to both.

01

Real estate

Purchase and sale contracts, easements, boundary line adjustments, deeds, property loans, CC&Rs and homeowners' associations, due diligence, quiet title, liens and foreclosure, leases.

02

Business, including LLCs

Formation, purchases and sales of businesses, contracts, employment agreements, mergers, commercial leases, evictions.

03

Wills and trusts

Drafted new, or revised so that a document written under another state's law does what you intended it to do under Idaho's.

04

Estate planning

Property trusts, special needs trusts, testamentary trusts, survivorship deeds, family LLCs. Kept as simple as the estate allows.

05

Probate

Summary administrations, intestate administrations, determinations of heirship, and joint probates in Bonner County.

Stephen T. Snedden

Third generation, Bonner County.

Which is a strange thing to lead with, until you have watched a county fill up with people who arrived after you did. I have been practising law on this lake since 2007, and my family has been on it a good deal longer than that.

  • Third-generation resident of Bonner County
  • Sandpoint City Council, 2008–2012
  • Board, Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce
  • Denise O'Donnell Day Pro Bono Award, Idaho State Bar
  • Pepperdine University School of Law
  • Admitted, Idaho — 2007
A lake and forested ridgeline at dawn.
In their words
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This website is for informational purposes only. Using this site or communicating with Snedden Law, P.C. through this site does not form an attorney/client relationship.

Sandpoint, Idaho

Bring me the deed and we will read it together.

Office
320 North Second Avenue
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864
Telephone
208.263.2000
Email
info@sneddenlaw.com
Hours
Monday – Friday
8:30 am – 5:00 pm
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Snedden Law, P.C. · Stephen T. Snedden, Attorney Sandpoint, Idaho