Benton County Quitclaim Deed (Divorce) Form

A Mississippi judgment of divorce can award the marital home to one party and leave the land records unchanged. In one situation it leaves something odder than silence: survivorship between two people no longer married. This fillable quitclaim deed answers both, drawn for one former spouse conveying to the other after entry of the judgment, without warranty of title.

Survivorship that outlives the marriage

Spouses who buy Mississippi land together sometimes take it as tenants by the entirety with right of survivorship, the estate Miss. Code Ann. Section 89-1-7 allows when the instrument makes it manifest. Divorce does not quietly undo it. Shepherd v. Shepherd, 336 So. 2d 497 (Miss. 1976), held that an estate by the entirety does not become an estate in common when the parties divorce; the former spouses hold as joint tenants with right of survivorship instead, a holding Ayers v. Petro, 417 So. 2d 912 (Miss. 1982), restates. Until an instrument moves the interest, the record can hand the whole parcel to whichever former spouse lives longer. Section 9 conveys the grantor's entire interest and terminates that survivorship as to the interest conveyed.

The signature the homestead statute stops asking for

Section 89-1-29 makes a homestead conveyance invalid unless the owner's spouse signs it where the owner is married and living with that spouse, and Welborn v. Lowe, 504 So. 2d 205 (Miss. 1987), calls the result void rather than repairable. The statute's condition is a relationship, and Section 93-5-27 ends it: in all cases of divorce from the bonds of matrimony, the marital rights cease with the judgment. So this deed is drawn for signing after the judgment is entered, and its operative section recites that the grantor is not married to and living with the grantee. One signature line, the printed name beneath it, one certificate in the short-form wording of Section 89-3-7(2).

The judgment written onto the deed

Section 4 identifies the judgment by the chancery court that entered it, the cause number, the entry date, and any settlement agreement it incorporated; Section 8 accepts performance of the judgment as the consideration recited. The court file and the judgment remain the proof of its terms, prepared separately and not included here. One grantor and one grantee are recited, former spouses. Records presenting this configuration include title standing in both names after the judgment awarded the parcel to one of them, title in one former spouse's name where the judgment awarded it to the other, and a fractional record interest the judgment assigns across. It is not laid out for two owners signing together, for a company or trustee, for an agent under a power of attorney, for a grantee other than the former spouse, or for a deed signed while the divorce is pending, when the parties remain married and the homestead question stays open. A search for a quit claim deed after divorce, in the two-word spelling, reaches this instrument.

No covenants travel, and neither does the loan

No warranty words appear in the operative section, and that omission fixes the deed's character. Section 89-1-37 turns a deed drawn without warranty into a quitclaim and release of the grantor's title and possession, and Section 89-1-39 carries every estate the grantor may lawfully part with. A capitalized paragraph lists the five covenants the word warrant carries under Section 89-1-33 and states that this deed makes none of them. Encumbrances are untouched, and so is the note: a deed moves an interest in land rather than a promissory note, so a former spouse who signed the loan stays on it until the lender releases that signer or the debt is paid.

What the clerk reads before indexing

Page one keeps its top three inches clear for the chancery clerk, with the preparer block, return address, title, party data, and indexing entry below that reserve as Section 89-5-24(2) contemplates. Both party sections gather the mailing address and two telephone numbers Section 27-3-51 lets a clerk insist on, and the Section 89-5-33(3) indexing instruction sits in a numbered section of its own, distinctly set apart. Section 25-7-9 charges twenty-five dollars for five pages or fewer; this deed prints in four.

The download holds three pieces: the blank deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example carrying an Ocean Springs parcel in Jackson County through the notary's certificate, and a guide covering the numbered sections, the divorce entries, signing, and recording. These materials set out Mississippi law in general terms; they are not legal advice.