Vermont Assignment of Mortgage (Two Individual Cotrustees)

The Vermont Assignment of Mortgage (Two Individual Cotrustees) transfers a mortgage held in trust from the two individual cotrustees who administer it to a new holder. Both cotrustees sign one instrument, each acknowledges it before a notary public, and the assignment is recorded in the land records of the Vermont town or city where the mortgaged land lies.

A trust-held mortgage changes hands

Trusts hold Vermont mortgages more often than the label suggests. A trust that sells real property and takes back seller financing becomes a mortgage holder; a family trust receives a mortgage moved into it as part of estate planning; a trust that lends privately records a mortgage as security. When the loan is later sold, distributed, or consolidated, the trust's interest moves by a recorded mortgage assignment. This form carries that transfer in one operative sentence: for value received, the assignor assigns, transfers, and sets over the identified mortgage to the assignee, together with the promissory note and all other obligations the mortgage secures and all sums due or to become due under them.

Vermont names the instrument in statute. Under 24 V.S.A. 1158, an assignment or discharge of a mortgage shall be duly recorded in the records of the town, with a marginal cross-reference between the assignment and the mortgage record so the chain of ownership reads continuously. That recorded chain matters at the end of the loan, when the discharge comes from the holder the land records show, and it matters in between, whenever a payoff statement, a foreclosure, or a title search asks who owns the mortgage today.

Two cotrustees, two signatures

The form recites the trust by its name and date and identifies exactly two individual cotrustees, both currently serving. Both sign, and the operative section states that the signers act solely in their capacities as cotrustees of the named trust and that both join in the assignment. The Vermont Trust Code frames that architecture: under 14A V.S.A. 703, cotrustees who are unable to reach a unanimous decision may act by majority decision, and with two cotrustees a majority is both of them. The form carries a separate acknowledgment certificate for each cotrustee, so the two signers may acknowledge on different dates, before different notaries, or in different states, and each certificate's name line carries the signer's representative capacity as cotrustee.

The identification section collects the record data that ties the assignment to one mortgage: the mortgagor, the mortgagee named in the mortgage, the mortgage date and recording date, the book and page or document number, the original principal amount, and the town whose land records hold it. The form is not set up as a single-trustee instrument, a corporate-trustee instrument, or an assignment by a holder who owns the mortgage individually; its recitals, signature blocks, and certificates describe the two-cotrustee pattern.

Recorded with the town clerk, for a flat page fee

Vermont records land instruments by municipality rather than by county, so the completed assignment of mortgage goes to the clerk of the town or city that holds the mortgage record. The statewide recording fee is $15.00 per page under 32 V.S.A. 1671. An assignment of mortgage ordinarily travels without a Vermont property transfer tax return, because the return requirement attaches to a deed or other document evidencing a transfer of title and the Department of Taxes instructions treat typical mortgage assignments as outside the filing category. Execution follows the general conveyancing statutes: signature and acknowledgment before a notary under 27 V.S.A. 341, printed names under signatures per 32 V.S.A. 1405, and recording under 27 V.S.A. 342, which leaves an unrecorded conveyance effectual only against the grantor and the grantor's heirs.

What the package prepares

A transfer of mortgage by a trust is paperwork most parties handle once, and the package is built for that single pass. It contains the fillable assignment of mortgage form, a completed example showing a trust-held Woodstock mortgage assigned by two cotrustees to a Rutland company, and a guide that walks each section, the notarization, and recording with the town clerk. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.