WORD OF THE DAY

A quitclaim is an act of giving up your ownership of a property and transferring it to another person. If your grandmother signs her house over to your dad, that's a quitclaim.

The legal term quitclaim can be used generally to mean "abandoning any claim on a property," or more specifically for a type of legal document that does the same thing. A quitclaim allows a person to transfer property to another person with a simple deed. The basic idea is that all the rights and claims of being a property owner are relinquished and legally turned over to someone else.