Louisiana Quitclaim Deed (Interspousal)

Both parties to this Louisiana quitclaim deed are married to each other. One spouse transfers to the other, with no warranty of title, whatever right, title, and interest that spouse holds in a described immovable, and the act itself stipulates what character the transferred interest carries from that moment, community or separate. Both spouses sign, one to transfer and one to accept and concur.

The article that once forbade this act now reads Reserved

Transfers between Louisiana spouses were restricted for more than a century. The Civil Code of 1870 allowed a contract of sale between husband and wife in three listed cases only, and the Louisiana Supreme Court held that line, describing sales or transfers between the spouses as prohibited outside those cases in Smith v. Smith, 239 La. 688 (1960). The matrimonial regimes revision of 1979 and the later revision of the sales articles dismantled the restriction, and on the Legislature's own site Civil Code article 2446 now reads Reserved. In its place stand two classification articles that fix what a transfer between spouses produces.

Two articles, two results

Article 2343.1 governs one direction: a transfer by a spouse to the other spouse of a thing forming part of his separate property, with the stipulation that it shall be part of the community, transforms the thing into community property. Article 2343 governs the other: the donation by a spouse to the other spouse of an undivided interest in a thing forming part of the community transforms that interest into separate property of the donee, and unless the act provides otherwise, an equal interest of the donee is transformed with it. The stipulation is no ornament: it is the element each article conditions its result on, which is why this deed gives it a numbered section.

A homeplace brought into the community, a half given away

A spouse who held the house before the wedding, or who inherited it individually, brings it into the community, so each spouse holds a present undivided one-half interest under article 2336. A spouse donates an undivided community half to the other, and the property afterward stands as that spouse's separate property. Article 2337 shows why the party structure carries weight: a spouse may not alienate an undivided community interest to a third person while the regime lasts, and the receiving spouse is no third person. The completed example runs the first pattern in Orleans Parish, where a Napoleon Avenue property acquired before the marriage enters the community of acquets and gains.

Gratuitous or onerous, and the form each demands

Article 2343.1 sets the execution rule too, and it divides: a transfer by onerous title must be made in writing, and a transfer by gratuitous title must be made by authentic act. Article 1541 says the same of a donation inter vivos, under penalty of absolute nullity, and article 1544 withholds effect until the donee accepts. So the deed collects the consideration or the statement that the act is gratuitous, prints the Grantee's acceptance above the Grantee's signature, and carries two witness lines for the article 1833 authentic act. One limit is easy to miss: Revised Statutes 35:623 keeps donations inter vivos outside remote online notarization and says remote notarization cannot execute an authentic act.

What this configuration carries

The deed recites two spouses and no one else. Each has a party section with domicile and permanent mailing address, and a joint section declares the marriage and the matrimonial regime. Then come the Grantor's declaration of how the property was acquired and its character, the stipulation section, the transfer with a full exclusion of the warranty against eviction that article 2503 implies, and the Grantee's acceptance, concurrence under article 2347, and release of the return of the price. Printed text states that the act moves a particular thing and neither modifies the matrimonial regime nor partitions the community.

Searched as an interspousal transfer deed, a spouse to spouse quit claim deed, or a quitclaim deed between husband and wife, the instrument speaks Louisiana's civil law vocabulary. Six recorded pages place it in the six to twenty five page tier of Revised Statutes 13:844, and an Orleans filing also meets the City of New Orleans Documentary Transaction Tax. The package holds the blank deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example on an Orleans Parish fact pattern, and a plain language guide covering the classification articles, execution, and recording. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.