A client came to our firm last year. After a long career as a surgeon, she had just paid off the mortgage on her Brooklyn brownstone. The deed was in her name, and her name alone. She had complete, undivided ownership—what the law calls holding property “in severalty.” Her question for me was simple: “I own it outright. What happens next?”
It’s a question my team and I hear often. For many New Yorkers, owning a home or a business property is the culmination of a life’s work. Severalty ownership feels like the ultimate achievement of that goal. You have total control. You can sell it, lease it, or re-mortgage it without anyone else’s signature. During your lifetime, this simplicity is a powerful advantage.
The complications arise when we stop thinking about ownership and start thinking about stewardship. That property isn’t just an asset; it’s a piece of your family’s future. When you pass away, that sole ownership becomes a significant burden for the people you leave behind.
The Double-Edged Sword of Sole Ownership
The term “severalty” can be misleading. It has nothing to do with the number seven and everything to do with the word “severed.” The ownership is severed from any other person’s interest. It belongs to one individual or one legal entity, like a corporation or an LLC. This is the default form of ownership for a single person buying property.
Unlike other forms of co-ownership—like a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship, which requires very specific language in the deed under New York Real Property Law § 240-c—severalty is straightforward. There are no co-owners to consult and no competing interests to manage. This autonomy is its greatest strength.
But that strength is also its greatest weakness in an estate plan. Because the property is titled only in your name, it has no automatic, legally defined path to a new owner upon your death. It becomes part of your probate estate. This means the brownstone my client worked so hard for would be frozen, under the control of the New York Surrogate’s Court, until a judge officially validates her will and appoints an executor to manage the transfer.
From Your Control to the Court’s Calendar
Probate is the court-supervised process of administering a deceased person’s estate. While necessary in many cases, it is rarely fast or private. For a major asset like real estate, the process is cumbersome.
First, the will must be filed with the Surrogate’s Court in the county where the person resided. An executor—named in the will—must be formally appointed by the court. Only then does that person have the authority to manage the property. In the meantime, who pays the property taxes, the utilities, the maintenance? The estate must cover these costs, but accessing the funds to do so can be delayed by the court process itself.
The entire process is public. The will, the inventory of assets including the property, and the names of the beneficiaries all become part of the public record. For families who value their privacy, especially high-net-worth individuals or executives, this public exposure is often an unwelcome consequence of an otherwise simple ownership structure.
The core issue is that a deed held in severalty does not function as an estate planning document. It establishes ownership during life, but it makes no provision for what happens after. That task is left to your will and, by extension, to the courts.
A More Intentional Path Forward
For clients like the surgeon from Brooklyn, the goal is to maintain control during her lifetime while creating a seamless, private transition of the property to her children after her death. The most effective tool we use for this is a revocable living trust.
By retitling the property from her individual name to her name as trustee of her trust, she loses no control. She is the trustee and the beneficiary. She can still sell the property, refinance it, or do anything else she could do as an individual owner. The only practical difference is the name on the deed.
The critical change happens upon her death. The trust document names a successor trustee—perhaps her eldest child or a corporate fiduciary—who immediately gains the authority to manage the property according to the terms she laid out. There is no probate. There is no court delay. The transfer of control is private and efficient, governed by a set of instructions she created.
This is the difference between passive ownership and active stewardship. Holding property in severalty is a fact; designing a structure to protect it for the next generation is a deliberate act of legacy planning.
The first step is understanding precisely how your most valuable assets are titled. My firm can conduct a review of your property deeds to confirm their current status and discuss whether that structure aligns with your long-term family and financial objectives.
