Erie County Full Release of Memorandum and Notice of Agreement Form

A memorandum of contract for deed enters the Ohio land records to show that a land contract exists, and it leaves them only when a release is recorded behind it. This Ohio Full Release of Memorandum and Notice of Agreement is that instrument: the separate writing by which the vendor and the vendee under a contract for deed release, in full, the memorandum they recorded with the county recorder, drawn for one or two individuals on each side of the contract.

A release both sides sign

Ohio Revised Code Section 5301.331 governs the cancellation, partial release, and assignment of a recorded land contract. It reads the cancellation as an act of the vendor and vendee together, and it recognizes two ways to do it: an endorsement on the original contract or on the margin of the recorder's record, or a separate instrument acknowledged as Section 5301.01 provides and recorded in the official records. This form takes the separate-instrument path. Because the statute names both parties, the form carries a signature block for each vendor and each vendee, up to two on each side, and recites that the signers are all of the parties to the memorandum and to the contract it gives notice of.

The marginal note the recorder makes

When a separate instrument of cancellation recites the recorder's file number of the original land contract, or its volume and page, the recorder notes the cancellation on the margin of the original record, which is where a title examiner reading the memorandum years later finds the pointer to the release. The form's third section collects that reference along with the memorandum's date, the contract date, and the recording date.

Full, not partial

This form releases the memorandum in full and as to the whole of the property. Its operative paragraph has the vendor and the vendee release, cancel, and discharge the memorandum of record and declare that it no longer gives notice of any interest, claim, or right in the property under the contract for deed. A partial release, which keeps the memorandum alive as to part of the land, is a different act under Section 5301.331, and the form prints none of its language. A closing paragraph states that the instrument releases the memorandum only, conveys no title, and leaves every deed, mortgage, and other instrument of record untouched.

Signing and recording in Ohio

Each signer acknowledges the instrument before an officer Section 5301.01 names, and the form prints the Ohio short-form acknowledgment of Section 147.55(A) in a separate certificate under each signature block, four certificates in all. Those separate certificates are a feature of the form's layout rather than a statutory command, since Section 147.542 states what every certificate contains without limiting a certificate to one signer; the arrangement lets each signer acknowledge on a different day before a different officer. The property section carries the legal description, parcel number, and municipal corporation or township that Section 5301.46 names for a release by separate instrument. The release records at the ordinary Section 317.32 fee, thirty-four dollars for the first two pages and eight dollars for each page after with the Housing Trust Fund fee included, plus any county surcharge, and it goes straight to the recorder: a release of a memorandum is not a deed of absolute conveyance, so no conveyance fee statement, auditor stamp, or transfer endorsement stands in its way.

The configuration this form recites

The form recites a vendor side and a vendee side, each of one or two natural persons signing in their own names, and fixes the release as a full release of the whole property. Two spouses who sold a house on land contract and the couple who finished paying for it present the two-and-two pattern the completed example fills; one vendor releasing with one vendee fills one block on each side and leaves the second blocks and their certificates blank. An entity vendor, a signer acting under a power of attorney, a court-ordered cancellation under Section 5313.09, and a release of part of the property only are configurations the form is not set up as.

The package includes the fillable release form, a completed example filled in for a realistic Franklin County fact pattern, and the guide that walks through every numbered section, the signing rules, and the recording process. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.