Decatur County Quitclaim Deed (Reserving Life Estate) Form

Iowa Code section 557.9 answers the question a reserved life estate raises about the years ahead: no expectant estate is defeated or barred by an alienation or other act of the owner of the precedent estate. This Iowa quitclaim deed is built on that division. One individual grantor quitclaims the remainder interest in Iowa real estate and reserves a life estate for the term of the grantor's own life.

What the grantor keeps and what the grantee takes

Two estates come out of one signing. The reserved life estate carries possession, use, rents, and profits for the grantor's lifetime. The remainder, the interest this deed quitclaims, belongs to the grantee immediately, while the right to occupy waits until the reserved estate ends at the grantor's death. Iowa Code section 557.6 authorizes that future interest, providing that estates may be created to commence at a future day, and section 557.3 gives the reservation its effect, since a conveyance passes the grantor's whole interest unless a contrary intent appears in the terms used. A quit claim deed, also searched as a life estate deed, warrants nothing about that title, so a mortgage keeps its grip on the whole parcel.

A remainder that a later act does not undo

Section 557.9 keeps a life tenant from defeating the remainder by a later conveyance, surrender, or merger, and it supplies the one statutory route around that result: on the petition of the life tenant, with the consent of the holder of the reversion, the district court may order the property sold, in proceedings as in an action for partition. Short of that, selling the entire fee gathers the life tenant and the remainder holders together. Section 7 reserves no power to revoke the deed and none to sell or mortgage what has passed.

One grantor, one measuring life, one spouse who may sign

The form recites exactly one individual grantor, whose own life measures the reserved estate, and a grantee entry sized for one grantee or several, with a co-ownership designation line. The completed example designates two grantees as joint tenants with full rights of survivorship, the vesting Iowa Code section 557.15(2) presumes for grantees identified as married to each other. A second labeled block belongs to the spouse of a married grantor, because under Iowa Code section 561.13 the spouse of the owner must execute the same or a like instrument before a homestead conveyance is valid, and a deed of the remainder is such a conveyance. That block relinquishes dower, homestead, and distributive share rights and carries away no interest of its own. The form is not set up for two owners reserving a joint life estate, for an entity or fiduciary signer, or for an estate measured by the life of anyone but the grantor. Records in this shape appear when an owner passes the family farm to the next generation and keeps the crop rents, and when a buyer purchases a remainder while the seller lives on.

Consideration for a partial interest, and the tax on it

Less than the whole property changes hands here, and the consideration line reflects it. The transfer tax of Iowa Code section 428A.1 runs at $0.80 for each $500 of consideration over the first $500, so the example's price of $95,000.00 for the remainder produces $151.20, paid to the county recorder. The Iowa Department of Revenue declaration of value lists a sale of partial interest among its Type of Sale choices. A gift takes the other road, where Iowa Code section 428A.2(11) excepts deeds between parent and child made without actual consideration.

Page one, and the tax bill that stays with the life tenant

Iowa Code section 331.606B holds three inches at the top of page one for the recorder and calls for the taxpayer's name and complete mailing address below that band. The person receiving the property tax statements on this deed is commonly still the life tenant in possession, and the example directs them there. The guide carries the rest: the statutory groundwater sentence under the title, the two acknowledgment certificates, and the affidavit that updates the county records once the life estate ends.

Three files come with the purchase: the fillable blank deed, a completed example worked as a Hardin County conveyance, and a plain language guide to the sections, signing, tax, and recording. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.