Montana Quitclaim Deed (Divorce)

Montana law says a dissolution court does not transfer the family home. Under Montana Code Annotated Section 40-4-202(4), the division of marital property incident to a decree of dissolution is not a sale, exchange, transfer, or disposition of property, but a division of common ownership the parties already held. The county index, meanwhile, still reads as it did the day they bought the place. This Montana quitclaim deed, also searched as a divorce quitclaim deed, closes that distance: one former spouse releases whatever right, title, and interest that spouse holds in the parcel, and the record catches up with the decree.

What the divorce decree settles, and what the record still shows

Section 40-4-202(1) has the district court equitably apportion the property belonging to either or both parties, however and whenever acquired, and whether title stands in one name or both. What none of it changes is the name in the grantee column of the last recorded deed. Section 3 of this form names the court, the cause number, the date of the decree, and the date of a property settlement agreement where the decree adopted one, so the recorded instrument and the district court file read together.

The survivorship line the divorce already cut

Former spouses who bought as joint tenants with right of survivorship no longer hold that way. Section 72-2-814 severs those interests and turns them into tenancies in common by operation of the divorce itself. The catch sits in the same section: the severance does not reach a good-faith third party relying for value on apparent survivorship unless a written severance has been noted, registered, filed, or recorded in records appropriate to the property. A recorded deed is that writing, and the operative section here releases any right of survivorship of the grantor expressly, alongside any homestead right or claim under Title 70, chapter 32.

One grantor, one certificate, a decree on the page

The form recites one grantor and one grantee, described as former spouses of each other, with a single signature line and one acknowledgment certificate on the Montana individual short form at Section 1-5-610. The grantee signs nothing. Section 2 takes the grantee's post-office address, because Section 7-4-2618 keeps the clerk and recorder from receiving a deed that lacks it. No joining spouse block appears: the both-spouses execution rule of Section 70-32-301 reaches the homestead of a married person, and this deed runs between people whose marriage a decree has dissolved. It is not set up for two grantors signing together, for a signer acting under a power of attorney, or for a grantor conveying as trustee, personal representative, or officer of an entity. Configurations of this kind reach the Montana record where a decree awards the home to one party and the other releases the interest standing in the joint index, where a lender wants record title in one name before a refinance closes, and where a decree years old still names both former spouses because no deed followed it.

What passes, and what stays behind

The operative sentence withholds the word grant, so the covenants Section 70-20-304 attaches to that word are restrained in express terms, and the after-acquired title route of Section 70-20-302 is disclaimed. What reaches the grantee is the grantor's actual interest at delivery, carrying every deed of trust, lien, easement, and plat restriction already burdening it. Liability on a promissory note stays where the loan documents put it.

The certificate that asks for the decree

Section 15-7-305 keeps the clerk and recorder from accepting an instrument evidencing a transfer until a Realty Transfer Certificate has been received. Divorce transfers have their own line in the exception statute: Section 15-7-307(6) covers a transfer pursuant to a court decree, and the certificate filed for it need not disclose consideration, which is why Section 8 of this deed so often points to the decree instead of a price. The published certificate form asks for a certified copy of the decree, so it rides with a confidential filing rather than with the recorded deed.

Recording runs 20 dollars for a first page and 10 dollars for each page after it, for documents recorded on or after October 1, 2025. Three things come in the download: this deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example worked out on a Missoula County release following an April 2026 decree, and a plain language guide covering each numbered section, the statutes behind them, notarization, and recording. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.