Defiance County Affidavit of Survivorship (Entity Beneficiary) Form

Some Ohio survivorship deeds join a person and an organization: a limited liability company, corporation, or partnership that took title beside a natural person for their joint lives, remainder to the survivor of them. When the natural person dies, the organization is the survivor, and it cannot swear to anything itself. The Ohio Affidavit of Survivorship (Entity Beneficiary) is built for that record: one deceased survivorship tenant, one surviving entity, and one natural person who swears to the facts on the entity's behalf.

A survivor that cannot die

Ohio Revised Code Section 5302.20(B) does the legal work before any paper is signed: on a survivorship tenant's death the decedent's title vests in the surviving tenant, who then holds the whole title alone. An entity survivor takes under that sentence like any other, with one difference: the tenancy ends at the first death and never produces a second, because the organization does not die. This affidavit records that single event under Section 5302.17, presented to the county auditor and filed with the county recorder with a certified copy of the death certificate.

Persons, in the statute's sense

Both survivorship sections speak of persons. Section 5302.17 describes a deed conveying to two or more persons; Section 5302.20(A) describes an interest conveyed or devised to two or more persons for their joint lives. Chapter 5302 does not define the word, so Section 1.59(C) of the Revised Code supplies the definition: person includes an individual, corporation, business trust, estate, trust, partnership, and association. The survivorship deed of record is what makes an organization a survivorship tenant; this form identifies that deed by recording date, document number, book and page, and county, and records the death that occurred under it.

One representative, one oath

The form fixes the configuration in its own text. Section 1 states that the affiant is an authorized representative of the surviving survivorship tenant, an entity, and makes the affidavit on its behalf in the capacity entered beside it, whether managing member, president, or general partner. Section 3 names the entity, its form and jurisdiction of organization, and its mailing address, and states that it is the only other survivorship tenant under the deed. Section 6 is the sworn statement that the decedent died while holding title as a survivorship tenant with the entity and that the decedent's title vested in the entity as sole title holder under Section 5302.20.

Because the signer swears rather than acknowledges, the certificate is a jurat, printed with the words Section 147.542(C)(3)(b) accepts, sworn to and subscribed before me. The line after the sworn sentence holds the affiant's name and office, so the record shows who swore and for whom.

The auditor's tax list and the recorder's index

Section 319.20 asks any instrument the auditor transfers to carry the address of the person taking title and a reference to the prior recorded instrument; the entity's address in Section 3 and the deed reference in Section 5 answer both. The auditor enters the entity on the tax list at that address, and a transfer to a surviving survivorship tenant under Section 5302.17 falls within the conveyance fee exemption of Section 319.54(G)(3)(n). The recorder's fee under Sections 317.32 and 317.36 runs thirty-four dollars for the first two pages and eight dollars for each page after, before any county surcharge; the affidavit prints on three pages inside the Section 317.114 margins, with the first-page top three inches left blank for the county stamps.

What the form is and is not set up as

The form recites exactly two survivorship tenants under the deed, one deceased and one surviving, and fixes the survivor as an organization signing through one natural person. A survivor who is a natural person, two or more surviving tenants, a survivor that holds through a trustee, registered land under Chapter 5309, a certificate of transfer under Section 2113.61, and a transfer on death confirmation under Section 5302.222 are different patterns, each prepared separately and not included in this package. Marital status has no entry here: the entity has no spouse, and the affidavit conveys nothing from the decedent.

The package includes the fillable affidavit, a completed example filled in for a Hamilton County limited liability company that survived its individual co-tenant, and the guide that walks through every numbered section, the jurat, and the auditor and recorder steps. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing Ohio statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.