Tenancy by the Entirety: Avoid 5 Costly Selling Traps

Tenancy by the entirety is a form of ownership only married couples get, and it means neither of you can sell the house alone. Both signatures, every time. Five traps catch sellers who assume otherwise. I walk through each one below, along with what a divorce, a death, or a tax lien does to your title.

What Tenancy by the Entirety Means When You Sell

The idea is old and the rule is short. A married couple owns the whole property as one owner, not as two halves. Cornell’s Legal Information Institute calls it shared ownership “recognized in most states, available only to married couples.” Spouses who hold this way, it adds, “cannot transfer their interest in the property without the consent of the other spouse.”¹

That last clause is the whole article. There is no half to sell. You are not two people who each own 50%, so there is nothing for one of you to sign away. It works much like a joint tenancy with right of survivorship, with one extra condition. You have to be married.

Virginia puts the same rule in its code. Spouses may hold property this way “for as long as they are married.” No entireties interest is severed by a written instrument, the statute says, “unless the instrument is a deed signed by both spouses as grantors.”² North Carolina gets there by presumption instead. A deed to two people who were married to each other at the time vests title in them as tenants by the entirety, unless the deed says otherwise.³

For a seller, all of that collapses into one practical fact. The buyer’s title company wants both names and both signatures at settlement. I would never let one spouse sign a listing agreement alone in an entireties state to save a day. I watched that shortcut cost a Virginia couple eleven days while the second signer was overseas. Their buyer’s rate lock expired in the middle of it.

5 Costly Traps When You Sell Entireties Property

These are the five that actually cost people money, in roughly the order they show up.

1. Signing the listing alone. One spouse cannot convey an entireties interest, so a contract carrying one signature does not move the house.¹
2. Treating a divorce filing as neutral. In Florida, the tenants “upon dissolution of marriage, shall become tenants in common,” which ends the survivorship right.⁴
3. Trusting the shield against every creditor. It stops a judgment against one spouse. It does not stop a federal tax lien.⁵⁶
4. Assuming your state still creates it. Ohio stopped making new entireties deeds on April 4, 1985, and only preserved the ones already recorded.⁷
5. Re-deeding the house mid-listing. In United States v. Craft, a quitclaim between the spouses after the lien was filed did not defeat the lien.⁶

Trap four is the one I get asked about most. So here is what I could actually cite a statute for. This is not every state. It is the handful I checked line by line while writing this.

State	Entireties	Statute
Florida	Yes	Fla. Stat. 689.11
Virginia	Yes	Va. Code 55.1-136
N. Carolina	Yes	N.C.G.S. 41-56
Maryland	Yes	Md. Real Prop. 4-108
Michigan	Yes	MCL 600.6023a
Ohio	Not since 1985	Ohio R.C. 5302.21

Ohio is the useful warning here. Deeds recorded before April 4, 1985 that created a tenancy by the entirety are still valid, and those couples were told they did not have to redo anything.⁷ So an Ohio seller can hold entireties title from a 1979 deed while a neighbor who bought in 1990 does not. Same street, different rule, and only the deed tells you which.

Florida’s statute is worth reading if you are selling there. It spells out how the estate gets created in the first place. One spouse conveys to the other by a deed that states the purpose, or conveys to both spouses.⁸ Pull your recorded deed and read the granting clause before you list. It takes five minutes on the county recorder’s site and it settles the question for good.

If you cannot tell from the deed what your state created, I would pay a title company to read it before you list. Finding out in escrow, with a buyer already waiting, is the expensive version.

The Creditor Shield, and the One Lien It Misses

Michigan says it in a single sentence. Real property “held jointly by a husband and wife as a tenancy by the entirety is exempt from execution under a judgment entered against only 1 spouse.”⁵ One spouse loses a lawsuit. The winner still cannot force a sale of the house. That protection is what most people mean when they say a tenancy by the entirety shields the home.

Federal tax debt is the exception, and it is not a small one. In United States v. Craft, decided April 17, 2002, the Supreme Court held that a husband’s interests in entireties property are “property” or “rights to property” to which a federal tax lien may attach.⁶ Michigan’s different answer for state-law creditors, the Court added, “does not dictate the choice here.” Same house. Same deed. A different creditor, and a different result.

Craft’s facts are the part sellers should sit with. After the notice of lien was filed, the couple deeded his interest to her. It did not clear the property. The IRS eventually released the lien so she could sell, with half the net proceeds held in escrow until the government’s share was worked out.⁶ She sold a house and then waited on half the money.

Here is a recommendation that costs us listings. If either of you has an unpaid federal tax balance, order the title search before you order the yard sign. Finding a lien in week one is a delay you can plan around. Finding it in week six, with a buyer already under contract, is usually a dead deal plus a second set of moving costs.

Checking is a great deal cheaper than assuming. A title company will run the search for a couple of hundred dollars before you ever list, and your county recorder’s index is free to search yourself in an afternoon. I have never once regretted paying for the early search, and I have watched several sellers regret skipping it.

Divorce, Death, and a Spouse Who Will Not Sign

Divorce is the clean break. Florida’s survivorship statute says that in estates by entirety, “the tenants, upon dissolution of marriage, shall become tenants in common.”⁴ Each of you holds a separate half from that point, as tenants in common. The automatic transfer to the survivor is gone. If you are selling in Florida mid-divorce, our flat fee MLS Florida page covers the state paperwork that goes with it.

A death runs the other way. Survivorship is baked into the tenancy, so the surviving spouse holds the whole property.¹ Virginia treats the words on the deed as the proof. Naming a couple as “tenants by the entirety” shows the intent that “the part of the one dying should belong to the other.”² Ownership changes on its own. The public record does not.

Your county index still shows two living owners. In my experience the title company asks for a certified death certificate and a short recorded affidavit. That is paperwork, not litigation, and it rarely costs more than a recording fee and an hour. Couples who want the same certainty while both spouses are alive sometimes look at a life estate deed. It solves a related problem with an entirely different set of tradeoffs.

Then there is the hard one. One spouse simply will not sign. Maryland’s code allows an entireties interest to be granted only “by both acting jointly.”⁹ I have never once seen a title company accept a power of attorney over a spouse’s live objection, and I would not advise anyone to try it.

That situation is a court’s problem rather than a listing problem, and treating it as a marketing question only makes it worse. Every week the house sits on the MLS instead of in front of a judge is a wasted week. Buyers read a long days-on-market number as a defect in the house, and they price it that way when they finally do write an offer.

When an Attorney Beats a $95 Listing

Most entireties sales are ordinary, so start with the ordinary math. NAR put the median existing-home price at $434,100 in July 2026, a 2.0% rise from $425,700 a year earlier.¹⁰ A 3% listing-side commission on that median is $13,023. At 2.5% it is $10,852.50. HomeRise charges $95 to list, plus a $495 closing compliance fee at settlement, so $590 all in.¹¹

That leaves $12,433 in your pocket at the 3% comparison and $10,262.50 at 2.5%. Same house, same buyer, same closing date. That is the whole argument for a flat fee MLS listing when the title is clean. NAR also put median time on market at 29 days that month, so this is not a slow-market trade where an agent earns the gap back in speed.¹⁰

Entireties ownership is not a lock on your front door. It is a rule about signatures, and it stops working the day the marriage does.

Now the part that costs us business. Four situations make a $95 listing the wrong first move. They are a divorce already filed, a spouse who refuses to sign, a spouse who has died with nothing recorded, or a federal tax lien sitting in the file. In all four of those, spend the money on a family-law or real estate attorney before you spend a dollar on marketing.

I would rather lose the listing than watch a seller pay us $590 and then lose $12,433 of savings because the deal died at the closing table. A few hundred dollars of legal time is the cheaper mistake. For everyone else, the path is boring, and boring is exactly the point. Read your recorded deed, confirm how both names appear on it, and get both signatures on the listing agreement before you go sell it yourself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can one spouse sell a house held as tenancy by the entirety?

No. Neither spouse can transfer an interest without the other’s consent, so one signature does not convey the house. Virginia goes further and requires a deed signed by both spouses as grantors before the interest is severed at all.

What happens to tenancy by the entirety in a divorce?

The tenancy converts. Florida’s statute says that on dissolution of marriage the spouses become tenants in common, which ends the automatic transfer to the survivor. Each of you then holds a separate half.

Does tenancy by the entirety protect the house from creditors?

It protects against a judgment entered against only one spouse, which Michigan states plainly in its exemption statute. It does not protect against a federal tax lien. The Supreme Court settled that point in United States v. Craft in 2002.

How is tenancy by the entirety different from joint tenancy?

Both give each owner an undivided interest and a right of survivorship. Only married couples can hold as tenants by the entirety, and neither spouse can transfer without the other’s consent. Joint tenants generally can act alone.

Do we have to change the deed before we list the house?

Usually no, if you are both alive, still married, and both willing to sign. You do need to clear the record first when a spouse has died, when a divorce is pending, or when a tax lien is on file. Re-deeding the house as a side project during a listing is how people create a brand new title problem.

Sources

1. Cornell Legal Information Institute, Wex, tenancy by the entirety (last reviewed June 2024).
2. Va. Code § 55.1-136, Tenants by the entirety in real and personal property.
3. N.C.G.S. § 41-56, Creation of tenancy by the entirety.
4. Fla. Stat. § 689.15 (2026), Estates by survivorship.
5. Mich. Comp. Laws § 600.6023a, exemption under a judgment entered against one spouse.
6. United States v. Craft, 535 U.S. 274 (2002), syllabus via Cornell LII.
7. Ohio Rev. Code § 5302.21, prior tenancy by the entireties (effective April 4, 1985).
8. Fla. Stat. § 689.11 (2026), conveyances between spouses.
9. Md. Code, Real Property § 4-108.
10. National Association of REALTORS, Existing-Home Sales, August 11, 2026.
11. HomeRise, flat fee MLS pricing, retrieved September 4, 2026.