Mercer County Mineral Deed (Quitclaim) (Married Grantor with Dower Release) Form

When a married Ohioan signs away the oil, gas, and other minerals under a tract of land, the deed carries a second signature that conveys nothing at all: the grantor's spouse signs only to release dower. This Ohio Mineral Deed (Quitclaim) (Married Grantor with Dower Release) is a fillable quitclaim deed of a mineral interest built around exactly that pattern, one married grantor conveying in the grantor's own right and one spouse joining under Section 2103.02 of the Ohio Revised Code to release the life estate that Ohio dower would otherwise leave outstanding against the minerals conveyed.

A signature that releases without conveying

Section 2103.02 gives a spouse who has not relinquished or been barred from it an estate for life in one third of the real property of which the other spouse was seized as an estate of inheritance during the marriage. Minerals in place are part of the realty under Ohio decisions, so a married owner holds a severed mineral interest subject to that inchoate interest. The statutory quit-claim deed form in Section 5302.11 answers with a single sentence, the spouse releases all rights of dower therein, and this deed prints that release as its Section 10, with its own signature block headed SPOUSE OF GRANTOR and its own acknowledgment certificate. The spouse is not a grantor, and nothing the spouse owns in the spouse's own name passes under the deed.

Minerals only, without covenants

The deed conveys the grantor's right, title, and interest in the oil, gas, coal, and all other minerals in, on, and under the described land, in whole or in the fraction stated in Section 6, with the appurtenant rights Section 5302.04 carries, and subject to any recorded lease or other matter listed in Section 7. The surface is not conveyed. Because the instrument follows the Section 5302.11 quit-claim form, it has the force and effect of a deed in fee simple to the grantee but without covenants of any kind on the part of the grantor: the grantee takes whatever the grantor holds, often an undivided fraction traced through decades of reservations, and the deed makes no promise about what that is. Buyers search for this instrument as a mineral rights deed, an oil and gas deed, or a quitclaim deed of mineral rights; this form is each of those, for one married grantor.

Two signers, two certificates, one married grantor

The configuration is fixed on the face of the deed: Section 1 prints that the grantor is a married person, Section 2 prints that the second signer is the grantor's spouse releasing dower, the signature section carries exactly two blocks, and a separate Section 147.55(A) acknowledgment certificate follows for each signer. The record presents this pattern when a married owner of severed minerals conveys them to a child, a buyer, or an operator, and when a married owner of both surface and minerals conveys the minerals and keeps the farm. Two spouses who both hold record title to the minerals present a two-grantor pattern, each conveying and each releasing dower in the other's share, and that is not the architecture this deed recites; nor is a deed by an unmarried owner, a trustee, a company, or an attorney-in-fact.

The auditor before the recorder

An Ohio conveyance of minerals or mineral rights is not admitted to record until the county auditor has stamped it and endorsed it transferred or transfer not necessary, under Section 317.22. The deed therefore carries the grantee's tax-mailing address and a prior instrument reference, the two items Section 319.20 requires for transfer, and the guide walks through the Section 319.202 conveyance-fee statement, the state fee of ten cents per hundred dollars of value, and the county transfer tax of up to thirty cents more. The form is laid out to the Section 317.114 standard, so the twenty dollar nonstandard-format fee is not triggered. Once recorded, the deed is a title transaction of which the mineral interest is the subject within Section 5301.47(F), the first of the events Section 5301.56(B)(3) lists in Ohio's Dormant Mineral Act; the guide describes that statute's twenty year window and procedures without applying them.

The package includes the fillable deed, a completed example filled in for a realistic Harrison County fact pattern, and a guide that walks through every section, the governing statutes, the forms of co-ownership a grantee may take, and the auditor-and-recorder process. This description and the guide describe the form and the Ohio statutes in general terms; they are not legal advice.