Decatur County Quitclaim Deed (Individual Grantor by Attorney-in-Fact) Form

Iowa's power of attorney statute uses the word quitclaim. Iowa Code section 633B.204 lists quitclaiming, along with selling, conveying with or without covenants, releasing, and surrendering, among the acts that general authority over real property carries, and this Iowa quitclaim deed is built for an agent exercising exactly that authority: one individual owner named as grantor, and one attorney-in-fact who signs in that owner's place.

The signature the owner never puts on the page

A deed the record owner did not sign raises a question at the notarial officer's desk, and Iowa answered it long ago. Iowa Code section 558.36, carried in the Code since the Revision of 1860, provides that the execution of any deed, mortgage, or other instrument in writing executed by any attorney in fact may be acknowledged by the attorney executing the same. The agent signs, and the agent acknowledges; the principal never appears. The certificate that follows is the representative capacity short form of Iowa Code section 9B.16, whose blank after the date holds the individual's name, the type of authority, and the party on whose behalf the record was executed: here the agent, the attorney-in-fact capacity, and the owner.

One principal, one agent, and a power of attorney named on the deed

The form recites exactly one individual grantor, the principal, and exactly one attorney-in-fact, with a numbered section identifying the power of attorney by date and, where it is of record, by recording reference. The effect of that section is supplied by statute rather than by the deed: under Iowa Code section 633B.201(7), an act the agent performs under a power of attorney binds the principal and the principal's successors in interest as though the principal had performed it. One signature line follows for the agent, and a second labeled block belongs to the spouse of a married principal, because section 633B.204 lets an agent release the principal's own homestead and elective share rights while the spouse's rights remain the spouse's to release. Iowa Code section 597.5 lets the two capacities meet in one person, since a spouse may serve as the other spouse's attorney in fact. Records in this shape appear when a durable power of attorney signed years earlier carries the signature of an owner now in long-term care, and when an owner living out of state cannot appear on the closing date. The form is not set up for two grantors, for an entity grantor, for a signer acting as trustee, executor, conservator, or guardian, or for coagents whose power is exercised by majority action under Iowa Code section 633B.111.

What passes, and what a power of attorney cannot stretch

The operative words come from Iowa Code section 558.19, whose quitclaim form releases all the interest of the grantor and warrants nothing about it. A mortgage, a judgment lien, an easement, an unpaid tax: each survives this deed exactly as it stood. Neither does the deed enlarge what the agent may do. Iowa Code section 633B.201 keeps certain acts, gifts among them, outside general authority unless the power of attorney expressly grants them, and it bars an agent who is not an ancestor, spouse, or descendant of the principal from creating an interest in the principal's property in the agent. Authority ends at the principal's death and on the other events Iowa Code section 633B.110 lists, so a quit claim deed signed afterward stands outside that chapter.

Page one, the tax, and the county recorder

Iowa Code section 331.606B keeps the top three inches of the opening page clear for the recording stamp and puts three entries beneath it: who drew the deed and at what telephone number, the taxpayer who receives the tax statements with a complete mailing address, and where the recorded original returns. The statutory no condition sentence of Iowa Code section 558.69 prints under the title, and a numbered section holds the Iowa Code section 428A.2 exemption ground where one applies. On the example's consideration of $92,500.00, transfer tax at eighty cents for each five hundred dollars above the first five hundred comes to $147.20, paid to the recorder with the declaration of value.

Three items arrive with this download: the fillable deed, a completed example worked as a Pottawattamie County release by an agent under a recorded durable power of attorney, and a plain language guide covering the sections, the certificates, the tax, the fees, and electronic submission through Iowa Land Records. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.