Utah Warranty Deed

A Utah warranty deed carries the strongest title promises the state attaches to a conveyance, and this one arrives with its party blocks empty. No marital status, no co-ownership words, and no capacity language is printed anywhere on the page. One or two owners sign it, one or two grantees take under it, and what is written in the blanks fixes both the covenant package and the way the new owners hold title.

The label does not carry the warranty, the operative words do

Utah Code Section 57-1-12 supplies the statutory warranty deed, and its operative words are conveys and warrants. A deed in that form passes fee simple with every appurtenance belonging to the premises and creates five covenants running from the grantor: lawful fee simple ownership with the right to immediate possession, good right to convey, quiet possession guaranteed to the grantee, premises free from all encumbrances, and title forever warranted and defended against all lawful claims whatsoever. Change the operative words and the promise changes with them. Conveys and warrants against all who claim by, through, or under the grantor produces the narrower covenants of Section 57-1-12.5; quitclaims produces the bare present-interest transfer of Section 57-1-13, which Section 57-1-10 also excludes from Utah's after-acquired title rule. This form carries the unlimited wording, and a labeled exceptions section sits immediately after the legal description, the placement Section 57-1-12(3) prescribes.

Blank where owners differ from one another

The configuration is deliberately open. Both party blocks are free-form and multi-line: the grantor block receives one or two natural persons conveying in their own capacity with whatever status recital the parties state, and the grantee block receives one or two names with a co-ownership designation. Four count patterns move through the same instrument, one owner to one buyer, one owner to a pair, a pair to one, and a pair to a pair, because the operative sentence speaks of grantor and grantee while the construction clause reads the singular as including the plural. Two signature blocks follow, headed GRANTOR and SECOND GRANTOR (if applicable), each with a printed-name line answering the typed-name rule of Utah Code Section 17-71-403 and an acknowledgment certificate of its own in the Statutory Short Form of Acknowledgment of Section 57-2a-7; where a sole owner conveys, the second block and second certificate stay blank. What the form is not set up as is equally plain: a deed signed for a company, by a trustee, or under a power of attorney recites an office and an authorizing source this instrument does not print, and three or more record owners call for more signature blocks than the two drawn here.

Why the grantee line does the deciding

Utah flipped its co-ownership default on May 1, 2024. Under Section 57-1-5 as amended that year, an interest granted to two or more persons in their own right is presumed to be a joint tenancy with rights of survivorship unless severed, converted, or expressly declared otherwise, so the designation typed after the grantee names confirms or displaces survivorship. The same section holds a trap worth knowing: a joint tenancy cannot be established between a person and an entity, corporation, trustee of a trust, or partnership, nor between two entities. The guide describes every form Utah recognizes, including the entireties and community property labels that Sections 57-1-5 and 75-1-201 fold into joint tenancy.

Refusal, not a surcharge

Utah puts recording conditions on the face of the document and enforces them at the counter. Sections 57-3-105 and 57-3-106 provide that a noncomplying document may not be presented and may be refused, with no statewide nonconforming-page fee to fall back on, so the grantees' mailing address for assessment and taxation, the first-page caption, the legal description, and the legible notarial stamp all appear here by design. The parcel number rides in the first-page margin, the placement Section 17-71-402(5) allows, clear of the stamp space a county may require. Recording runs 40 dollars statewide under Section 17-71-407 and 45 dollars in several counties after the 2026 amendments, and no transfer tax attaches to an ordinary Utah conveyance.

Searches for this instrument also use general warranty deed, full covenant deed, and statutory warranty deed; the Utah Code simply says warranty deed. The download contains that deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example filled on a Weber County fact pattern, and a plain language guide covering each numbered section, the notarial certificate, and the recording steps. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.