North Carolina Quitclaim Deed (Married Couple as Grantors)

A deed out of a North Carolina marriage answers to more than one statute, and this fillable quitclaim deed is drafted around that fact: it names a married couple as its two grantors, states that they are married to each other, and carries a signature line and an acknowledgment certificate for each spouse, so the conveyance to a single grantee reaches the register of deeds with the marital signing rules already satisfied on its face.

Why the second signature carries its own statute

North Carolina gives a surviving spouse the right to elect a life estate in one third in value of the real property the deceased spouse held during the marriage, under G.S. 29-30. To cut that contingent right off as to land being conveyed, G.S. 39-7 looks for the owner's spouse to execute the instrument with acknowledgment or proof, apart from the statutory exceptions. A deed both spouses sign closes that question no matter which spouse the record names as owner. Where the couple holds as tenants by the entirety, the marriage's own form of co-ownership, the same two signatures supply the written joinder without which neither spouse alone may convey or encumber the property. Two names, two signatures, two certificates: the architecture is the compliance.

Built as a married-couple instrument

The form recites exactly two grantors, married to each other, with a name and mailing address for each; one grantee; the consideration; the statement G.S. 105-317.2 calls for on whether the property takes in the primary residence of a grantor; and an acknowledgment certificate for each signer, so the spouses may acknowledge on the same afternoon or weeks apart. Patterns that present this shape in the record include parents passing the home place to an adult child as a gift, a husband and wife releasing their interest in family land to a relative after an informal division, and a couple joining in a deed that settles a boundary with an adjoining owner. The form is not set up as a deed for one grantor acting alone, for co-owners who are not married to each other, or for three or more conveying parties; it is the married pair's instrument.

What a quitclaim moves

As a quitclaim, sometimes searched as a quit claim deed or a non-warranty deed, the instrument releases the grantors' right, title, and interest, if any, and promises nothing about what that interest is. The operative words remise, release, and forever quitclaim, paired with an express no-warranty sentence, put the risk of title where a quitclaim leaves it, on the grantee, while the fee simple presumption of G.S. 39-1 carries the whole of whatever the couple owns unless the deed says less.

From signing table to record book

The first page budgets for everything a North Carolina register reads before indexing: the three inch recording space of G.S. 161-14(b) with the instrument type stated beneath it, the drafter entry of G.S. 47-17.1, the excise tax report the register acts on under G.S. 105-228.32, the parcel identifier, and the return address. Registration in the county where the land lies is what makes the deed good against lien creditors and purchasers for value under the race rule of G.S. 47-18, so the trip to the courthouse is part of the conveyance, not an afterthought.

What the purchase delivers

The download holds the married-couple quitclaim deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example worked through a Wake County gift from parents to their daughter, and a plain language guide to each numbered section, the spousal signing statutes, the excise tax treatment of gifts, and the county recording steps. The materials describe North Carolina law generally and are not legal advice.