Vermont Assignment of Mortgage (Married Couple or Civil Union Partners)

The Vermont Assignment of Mortgage (Married Couple or Civil Union Partners) transfers a recorded Vermont mortgage from two holders who are married to each other or joined in a civil union to a new holder. The form recites exactly two assignors in one of those relationships and carries a signature block and an acknowledgment certificate for each of them, the configuration that matches a mortgagee interest a couple holds together.

Two holders of one mortgage

A couple ends up on the lender's side of a Vermont mortgage most often through seller financing: spouses or civil union partners sell property they owned together, take back a mortgage from the buyers, and collect payments over time. When they later transfer that mortgage, commonly with the note it secures, both of them appear in the instrument. Vermont marital property law explains why. Vermont title practice treats a conveyance to two persons whose marriage or civil union the state recognizes as creating a tenancy by the entirety unless the instrument shows a different intent, and under Cooper v. Cooper, 173 Vt. 1 (2001), neither spouse owns a separable share of entireties property that can be disposed of without the other's joinder. Under 15 V.S.A. § 1204, parties to a civil union have the same property benefits and protections as spouses, including eligibility to hold property as tenants by the entirety. Both assignors joining in a single recorded instrument is the pattern those rules produce, and it is the pattern this mortgage assignment form recites.

A transfer the town records can follow

Vermont records land instruments by town or city rather than by county, and 24 V.S.A. § 1158 directs that an assignment of a mortgage be duly recorded in the records of the town. The recorded assignment is also what keeps the discharge chain intact: the same section lets the assignee of a mortgage discharge it on the margin of the mortgage record, and 27 V.S.A. § 464 has the mortgagee of record deliver, with the discharge, any instrument necessary to establish record ownership of the mortgage. A mortgage holder whose assignment never reached the land records is the gap those statutes describe. The statewide recording fee is $15.00 per page under 32 V.S.A. § 1671, and an ordinary assignment of mortgage is presented without a Vermont property transfer tax return, which the Department of Taxes instructions reserve for deeds and other documents transferring title.

What the form recites

The form identifies each assignor by name and mailing address, states the relationship between them in their own words, and names the assignee. A dedicated section identifies the mortgage being assigned by its mortgagors, original mortgagees, date, book and page recording reference, and original principal, and a property section carries the town, county, legal description, and street address, so the clerk can tie the assignment to the recorded mortgage. The operative section assigns, transfers, and sets over the mortgage together with the obligation it secures, and recites that the assignors hold the mortgagee's interest together, are the holders of record, and have not previously assigned or discharged the mortgage. An additional provisions section accepts negotiated terms such as a without-recourse statement. The form is not set up as a single-holder assignment or an entity assignment; it recites two individual assignors in a marriage or civil union with each other.

Executed like a Vermont conveyance

Vermont is a title theory state, and an assignment of the mortgagee's interest is executed with conveyance formalities: each assignor signs and acknowledges before a notary public under 27 V.S.A. § 341, and under 27 V.S.A. § 342 an unrecorded conveyance holds only against the grantor and the grantor's heirs. The two acknowledgment certificates let the assignors appear on different dates, before different notaries, or in different states, and printed name lines under the signatures serve the name-under-signature provision of 32 V.S.A. § 1405.

The download includes the fillable assignment of mortgage form, a completed example showing a seller-financed Middlebury mortgage assigned by a married couple, and a guide that walks through each section, the notarization formalities, and recording with the Vermont town clerk. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.