Benton County Quitclaim Deed (Married Couple as Grantors) Form

Missouri folds a married couple's jointly held real estate into a single marital estate: spouses named together on a deed presumptively hold as tenants by the entirety, each owning the whole, and while the marriage continues neither spouse alone can convey it away. This Missouri quitclaim deed is built for that ownership on the giving side. It names both spouses as grantors, states on its face that they are married to each other, and carries separate signature and notarial acknowledgment blocks for each spouse, so the couple's entire interest leaves the record through one instrument.

One marital estate, one conveyance out of it

The entirety estate is the reason this variant exists. Under Nelson v. Hotchkiss and its successors, a Missouri deed naming spouses as co-grantees ordinarily vests them by the entirety unless the instrument clearly negates that estate, and the estate answers only to the spouses acting together: a conveyance signed by one spouse alone moves nothing out of it. A deed out of the entirety therefore recites the couple as a unit, and this form does that structurally, with a grantor section that carries both names, one shared mailing address, and a single printed statement of the couple's married status. RSMo Section 442.130 has every conveyance state whether its natural-person grantors are married or unmarried; this form answers with one recital, that the grantors are married to each other, printed on the first page where Missouri's recording standards place grantor marital status.

Two spouses, two certificates, one instrument

The form recites exactly two grantors, married to each other and acting in their individual capacities. Both spouses sign above printed-name lines, and each signature takes its own acknowledgment certificate carrying the short-form substance of RSMo Section 442.210, together with the blank on which the officer records, as RSMo Section 442.145 directs, whether the spouse appeared in the same room or through communication technology, so the spouses may appear before one notary in a single sitting or acknowledge separately, on different dates, in different counties or states. A married couple retitling a rental house into the limited liability company they organized, spouses placing entirety real estate into the revocable trust they settled together, and a couple releasing whatever interest the marriage holds in a strip of land to settle a boundary question present the pattern this deed recites. The form is not arranged as a conveyance by one owner or by co-owners who are not married to each other; those configurations carry different grantor sections and different execution patterns.

A quitclaim that keeps covenants out

The operative section remises, releases, and forever quitclaims to the grantee all right, title, and interest the spouses hold at delivery, and it closes the statutory door Missouri leaves open: RSMo Section 442.420 implies covenants of title in a deed that uses the words grant, bargain and sell, so this deed avoids those words and states expressly that no covenant of title is implied from any word or phrase in it. Nothing in the deed promises that title is clear, and interest the grantors acquire later does not pass through it. Customers searching for a quit claim deed or a quitclaim form reach the same instrument; Missouri practice reads the operative words, not the label.

Recording with the county recorder

The completed deed goes to the recorder of deeds for the Missouri county, or the City of St. Louis, where the land lies, and from filing the record imparts notice of the conveyance to all persons. Missouri's constitution bars any new tax on the sale or transfer of real estate, so recording costs are per-page fees each recorder publishes. The included example works a Jackson County fact pattern from end to end: a Kansas City couple quitclaiming the rental property they hold by the entirety to their Missouri limited liability company, with both acknowledgments completed before the same notary on the same day.

The download delivers the married-couple quitclaim deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example showing every section filled in for the Jackson County pattern described above, and a plain-language guide covering each blank, the spousal statutes behind the joint execution, and the recording steps. The materials describe Missouri law in general terms; they are informational and not legal advice.