How do I pass land near Seville, Ohio to children who live out of state?

A revocable living trust can hold the land now and state who receives it, whether it may be sold and who decides. Ohio's transfer-on-death designation affidavit avoids probate for a parcel but does not settle disagreements among several children.

Is an Ohio transfer-on-death affidavit enough, or do I need a trust?

A transfer-on-death affidavit keeps one parcel out of probate. It does not cover bank accounts or equipment, fails if the named person dies first, and does nothing if you lose capacity. A trust handles all of those.

Can Ohio Medicaid recover against a family farm after a parent dies?

Ohio's estate recovery program can claim against real estate a Medicaid recipient owned at death, and its reach extends beyond probate. Recovery waits while a spouse lives, and hardship exceptions exist. Review the deeds before deciding anything.

What does an executor do in Medina County Probate Court?

Apply for appointment, gather the assets, notify heirs and creditors, file an inventory, pay valid debts and distribute what remains. Real estate transfers by a recorded court document. An attorney carries the filings and deadlines.

A father and son in a pole barn doorway looking out over a harvested field, a tractor behind them

Seville, from where I sit

The land is the plan. Nobody has written it down.
Photos on this page are illustrations and do not show actual clients.

Sunday afternoon, the dog gets his way and we drive out to Hubbard Valley Park. The lake is flat and gray, the trail around it is a mile and a quarter of leaves, and the sledding hill is bare, which my older daughter takes personally. She checks it every week from October on. The dog does not care about snow. He cares about geese.

Seville is a village, and it feels like one. Main Street runs through the middle with a gazebo at Maria Stanhope Park and a sign about the Giants of Seville, the very tall couple who settled here in the 1870s and whose graves are out at Mound Hill Cemetery on East Main. My girls find this thrilling. The giants are the only history lesson they have ever requested twice.

What I notice on the drive home is how the houses sit. In the village, close to the street, with porches and a flagpole. A mile out, a farmhouse and a barn and the fields running back to the tree line. A mailbox with the family name painted on it, the same name on the barn. People here own, and they have owned a long time.

RUBEN PHOTO SLOT seville-01 (hidden until the photograph arrives)

I’m Ruben J. Martinez, an estate planning attorney licensed in California and Ohio. I work with Seville families by video, by phone, and in person by appointment.

The houses

Here is what a Seville family owns, more often than not. A house in the village that was paid off before the kids finished school. Or acreage in Guilford Township, forty or eighty or a hundred and twenty, farmed by the family or leased to the neighbor who still farms. A pole barn with a tractor in it worth more than the car. A grandparent’s house two roads over that nobody has had the heart to sell.

RUBEN PHOTO SLOT seville-02 (hidden until the photograph arrives)

The children have moved. Columbus, Charlotte, Phoenix. They come home for Thanksgiving and walk the fence line with Dad and do not ask the question. Dad does not raise it. The land is the plan, and the plan is unwritten.

In Ohio, land passes by the deed and what is recorded with the county, not by what everyone understood at the table. One name on the deed, and the farm goes to the probate court. Three kids and no instructions, and the farm gets divided, or sold to divide it. Most of the acreage I see around Seville is not in a trust and carries no transfer-on-death designation. It is simply owned, by the generation that is getting older.

What Seville families ask me

Three adult siblings in a gravel farm lane looking toward the white farmhouse and red barn they grew up in — *Three children, one farm, no instructions.*

I have land outside Seville and my kids live out of state. How do I pass it to them without a mess?

Start with what you want. One child who farms and two who do not is a different plan than three who want the money. A revocable living trust can hold the land now and spell out who gets what, whether it can be sold, and who decides. Ohio also allows a transfer-on-death designation affidavit on real estate, recorded with the county, which avoids probate but does not solve the three-kids problem. I would walk the land with you on paper and draft to your answer.

Is a transfer-on-death affidavit enough, or do I need a trust?

A transfer-on-death affidavit is a short recording that names who gets the property when you die, and it keeps that parcel out of probate. It is simple and inexpensive. It does nothing for your bank accounts, your truck or the equipment, nothing if the person you named dies first, and nothing if you lose capacity and someone needs to manage the land for you. For a single parcel and a simple family, it can be right. I would tell you honestly which one you are.

My mother was on Medicaid at the end. Will the state come after the farm?

It might. Ohio’s estate recovery program can file a claim after a Medicaid recipient dies against what she owned, including real estate, and Ohio’s definition reaches past probate. There are exceptions: recovery waits while a spouse is living, and hardship can be argued. The details depend on how the land was titled and when. I would want the deeds and her Medicaid record before the family makes any decision about the property.

Dad died and I am the executor. What do I actually do?

You ask the Medina County Probate Court to appoint you, then gather what he owned, notify the heirs and creditors, file an inventory, pay what is owed, and distribute the rest. The land transfers by a court-issued document that gets recorded. I handle the filings and the deadlines; you handle the family. Most estates are quieter than people fear.

How it works from here

A woman at a farmhouse kitchen table with a folder and a phone propped against the sugar bowl, a barn through the window — *The first call, from the kitchen, with a daughter in another time zone.*

Your first and second consultations are free, by video or phone. Most Seville families take the first one from the kitchen, with the deed on the table and a child on speaker from another time zone. I listen first, then say what I would do and what it costs.

Before the second call, find the deeds for every parcel, recent account statements, any lease on the land, and whatever old will exists. I draft from those. You read, you call with questions, we adjust.

Signing is in person, by appointment in Medina County, with a notary and two witnesses. The deeds and any transfer-on-death affidavits are recorded with the county recorder, and I confirm they were. A few weeks from first call to finished plan is usual. Harvest and holidays slow it down; a clear decision speeds it up.

When the family is home

A father and son walking a fence line after Thanksgiving dinner with a dog ahead and the lit farmhouse behind — *The walk after dinner, the question not asked.*

The first Thanksgiving after the girls were born, I sat at a full table and understood something I should have seen years earlier. Every adult there assumed somebody else had the paperwork. The parents thought the kids knew where things were. The kids thought the parents had it handled. I draft trusts for a living, and I had never asked my own mother where hers was.

RUBEN PHOTO SLOT seville-03 (hidden until the photograph arrives)

Farm tables are the hardest. The parents want to say it; they have thought about it every planting season. The children do not want to hear it, because the subject is the day Dad is not on the tractor. So someone passes the rolls and the moment goes by, again.

One sentence opens it, and it is a question, not a speech: “Mom, if something happened, where would we even look?” Where are the deeds. Who holds the lease. Is there a will, and in which drawer. The answer is a gift the parents have been wanting to give. They are usually relieved to be asked.

If someone in your family has just died

This week: find the will and any trust. Secure the house and the barn, keep the insurance and utilities paid, and check with whoever farms or leases the land. Order several certified death certificates. Do not sell equipment or move money yet.

Within a month: find out whether the estate needs probate. Ohio has a release from administration for smaller estates and full administration for larger ones. If the land was in a trust or carried a transfer-on-death affidavit, it may not need probate at all.

Seville families file in Medina County Probate Court. I handle the filings and the deadlines so the family can grieve without carrying the paperwork. One box at a time.

What my family loves about Seville

The Phoenix Block, built in 1870, on Main Street in Seville, Ohio — *The Phoenix Block, 1870, Main Street.*
Photo: Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

My girls love Skoops, our local ice cream spot on Main Street, for its custard. There’s the quaint village library, with its super-friendly staff, and Sparky’s Pizza for cult classics like the pickle pizza. And there are the people, who make this village feel like hot cider on a cold winter day.

PHOTO WANTED: Skoops (Ruben’s own picture). Credit line to use: Photographed by Ruben J. Martinez.

Around town

The Giants of Seville

Seville’s best story is about two people who did not fit through ordinary doors. Anna Swan and her husband, Bates, married in London in 1871, and the couple lived in a house with fourteen-foot ceilings. They are buried in Mound Hill Cemetery, and Ohio Historical Marker 1-52 tells their story. It is a story about two people who needed the world built a little differently for them, and found a village willing to make room.

Seville’s antique shops trade in other families’ pasts, and every June the World’s Largest Yard Sale turns up even more of them, laid out on tables and priced to move.

A yard sale is, quietly, what happens to a family’s things when nobody decided. A plan is the deciding.

What is left of Chippewa Lake Park

For a hundred years, from 1878 to 1978, Chippewa Lake Park was where Medina County went for a summer night out. There was the Big Dipper roller coaster, the ballroom, and the Ferris wheel. Grandparents in this part of Ohio will tell you who they danced with there.

The park closed in 1978. The frame of the Ferris wheel still stands, and it is the photograph everyone takes. In May 2026 the Tumble Bug Trailhead opened, so families can walk the ground again.

A place like that lives on mostly in what people remember and pass along. The stories outlast the rides. That is true of families too, and it is worth making sure the stories, and the people telling them, stay together.

Talk with Ruben

A gravel farm lane running between fence posts toward a white farmhouse and red barn under a gray November sky — *The lane home.*

RUBEN PHOTO SLOT seville-04 (hidden until the photograph arrives)

Ohio: (330) 960-6084. California: (909) 375-3377. Your first and second consultations are free, by video or phone; in person by appointment. Admitted in Ohio in 2026 and in California in 2020. Serving Medina County and Summit County, Ohio.

If the sledding hill at Hubbard Valley has snow on it, I already know. My daughter told me.