Vermont Memorandum of Lease (Married Couple as Lessors)

This fillable memorandum of lease is prepared for Vermont property owned by a married couple: two lessors who are spouses, one lessee, and one recorded instrument that puts their long-term lease on the town land records without placing the lease itself there. It is the short, recordable notice Vermont law calls a notice or memorandum of lease, built for a lease with a term of more than one year.

Notice on the record, rent off the record

A Vermont lease that runs longer than one year sits inside the recording rules for conveyances. Under 27 V.S.A. Section 342, such a lease holds the estate against persons other than the lessors and their heirs only when it is acknowledged and recorded. Recording the whole lease would place every business term, rent included, in the public records. 27 V.S.A. Section 341(c) supplies the alternative: a notice or memorandum of lease, executed and acknowledged by the parties to the lease and recorded in the land records of the town where the property lies, in place of the lease at length.

The statute lists what the recorded notice contains, and the form's numbered sections track that list: the names and addresses of the parties as set forth in the lease, the date the lease was executed, the term, a description of the leased property, extension and renewal rights, purchase or first refusal rights, restrictions on assignment, and the location of an original of the lease.

Two married lessors, three signatures

The form recites exactly two lessors, married to each other, and one lessee. The lessor section carries a name and address entry for each spouse and states that the lessors are married to each other; the signature area carries three signature blocks; and each signer has an acknowledgment certificate of its own, so the three signatures can be taken on different dates, before different notaries, or in different states.

The married couple architecture reflects how Vermont spouses hold land. Vermont title practice treats a conveyance to a married couple as a tenancy by the entirety, an estate in which neither spouse holds a separable share that can be conveyed or encumbered alone, and 27 V.S.A. Sections 141 and 349 describe spousal joinder for homestead and entireties property. A multi-year lease is a conveyance of an interest in the land, so a lease of property the spouses hold together names both of them as lessors, and that is the pattern this memorandum recites. Spouses leasing the family farm, a village commercial building, or a house they own together present the two-lessor pattern this form carries; a sole owner, an entity landlord, and co-owners who are not married to each other each present a different signature architecture than the one this form is set up as.

Recording in the town, not the county

Vermont records land instruments by municipality, so the completed memorandum goes to the clerk of the town or city where the leased property is situated, at the statewide fee of 15 dollars per page under 32 V.S.A. Section 1671. No property transfer tax return accompanies an ordinary memorandum of lease. Vermont's transfer tax definitions reach a leasehold only when the term is perpetual, reaches fifty years, can be extended by renewal to fifty years, or, for a shorter lease, when a right to purchase is combined with rights to construct buildings or major improvements; a memorandum of a lease in that territory counts as a deed under 32 V.S.A. Section 9601 and records only with a completed Form PTT-172 under Section 9608.

What the recorded memorandum accomplishes

Once recorded, the memorandum gives record notice of the lease and its listed terms, which is what protects a long-term lessee's estate against later purchasers and encumbrancers under the recording rule. The lease itself remains the parties' agreement: the memorandum does not amend it, states where the original lease is held, and is controlled by the lease on any inconsistency. A later amendment, an assignment, or a termination of the lease takes its own instrument, prepared and recorded separately and not included in this package.

The download includes the fillable Vermont memorandum of lease form, a completed example showing a ten year Milton farm lease entered section by section, and a guide that walks through each entry, the signing sequence for the three signers, and recording with the town clerk. The materials are informational and are not legal advice.