Cuyahoga County Quitclaim Deed (Divorce) Form

A divorce decree can award the marital home to one spouse, and the county record still reads both names the next morning. Ohio closes that gap with a deed, and this form is that deed: one spouse or former spouse conveys Ohio real property to the other under the statutory quit-claim form of Ohio Revised Code Section 5302.11, with the court, the case number, the judgment type, and the date of entry on its face.

The court divides, the deed conveys

Section 3105.171 has the domestic relations court divide marital property equitably, and division (H) adds that the way title is held does not decide whether property is marital or separate. What a judgment settles between two people is not what a title examiner reads. Record title moves through a recorded conveyance, and Section 319.20 has the auditor enter that transfer from two entries this deed prints: the grantee's tax-mailing address, and the reference to the instrument through which the grantor claims title.

Dower the decree already ended, released again in writing

Ohio keeps dower. Section 2103.02 endows a spouse with a life estate in one third of the real property the other spouse was seized of as an estate of inheritance during the marriage, and terminates that interest upon the granting of an absolute divorce by a court of competent jurisdiction within or without this state. That termination sentence names one route out of a marriage, while Ohio also ends marriages by dissolution and by annulment, and a deed drafted under a separation agreement is sometimes signed before entry of any decree. Section 8 answers all of that in one place, releasing dower and every interest arising out of the marriage from grantor to grantee, so the release turns neither on which proceeding ended the marriage nor on the calendar.

A survivorship tenancy that ended without anyone signing

Section 5302.20(C)(5) has done its work before this deed is drafted. Where two survivorship tenants married to each other have the marriage terminated by divorce, annulment, or dissolution, the title immediately ceases to be a survivorship tenancy and becomes a tenancy in common, unless the judgment expressly states that it continues. No instrument records that conversion, so the chain keeps reading as a survivorship deed until one does. Section 7 accordingly grants whatever the grantor holds, whether as a survivorship tenant, as a tenant in common, or through the marriage itself.

One grantor, one grantee, and the judgment between them

The form recites exactly one individual grantor, a spouse or former spouse of the single grantee, with one signature block and one acknowledgment certificate. Section 3 takes the court, case number, judgment type, and date of entry, and Section 5 carries the legal description with its encumbrances, reservations, and exceptions. Former spouses consolidating a survivorship title into one name, and a spouse who never appeared on the deed releasing whatever the marriage produced, present the record this deed recites. Its edges are its entries: two record owners signing call for a wider arrangement, and a grantor who remarried after the decree raises a dower interest belonging to a nonparty. Searches for a quit claim deed, the hyphenated quit-claim spelling Ohio's code prints, or a divorce deed arrive here.

Exemption (f) at the auditor's window

An Ohio deed clears the county auditor before the recorder sees it, and a court-ordered transfer has its own line on the exemption list. Section 319.54(G)(3) charges ten cents per hundred dollars of value, never under a dollar, and item (f) reaches a transfer made pursuant to court order to the extent it is not the result of a sale effected or completed pursuant to that order. Form DTE 100EX prints that item in the same words, and Section 322.01 keeps an exempt instrument outside the county permissive transfer tax. An auditor may call for a copy of the judgment or an affidavit of facts, filings prepared apart from the deed itself. Section 317.22 holds the instrument out of the record until the auditor's stamp and endorsement appear.

Three files arrive with the purchase: the deed as a fillable PDF drawn to the standard document format of Section 317.114, a completed example carrying a Summit County transfer between former spouses through every numbered entry, and a plain language guide to the nine sections, the dower and survivorship statutes, the title forms an Ohio grantee may take, and the two county offices. Everything here describes Ohio law and this form in general terms and is not legal advice.