Vermont Memorandum of Lease (Married Lessor with Non-Owner Spouse Joinder)

On this Vermont memorandum of lease, one signature line belongs to a person who is not a party to the lease at all: the lessor's spouse. The form prepares the recordable notice of a lease that 27 V.S.A. 341(c) describes, configured for a married lessor who holds record title in the lessor's sole name, and it carries a joinder block in which the non-owner spouse joins in the execution and acknowledgment of the memorandum and in the lease it describes.

Why a spouse with no record title signs

Vermont's homestead statute, 27 V.S.A. 141, provides that a homestead or an interest in a homestead is not conveyed by a married owner, outside the purchase-money mortgage exception, unless the owner's spouse joins in the execution and acknowledgment of the conveyance; a conveyance made without that joinder is inoperative as to the homestead. A companion rule, 27 V.S.A. 349(a)(2), reaches conveyances of an interest in homestead or tenancy-by-the-entirety property to anyone other than the owner's spouse. A lease is a grant of an interest in land, and where the leased premises include or overlap the homestead, a barn, an accessory building, an apartment, or acreage on the home parcel, the joinder block places the spouse's signature and acknowledgment in the record alongside the lessor's. The block states its own limits on the face of the form: the joining spouse acquires no leasehold interest and assumes no obligation under the lease.

What section 341(c) puts in the land records

Vermont law does not call for the lease itself to go on record. 27 V.S.A. 341(c) describes a notice or memorandum of lease containing the names of the parties, any addresses set forth in the lease, the date of execution, the term, a description of the leased property, rights of extension or renewal, rights of purchase or first refusal, restrictions on assignment, and the location of an original lease, executed and acknowledged by the parties to the lease. The numbered sections of this memorandum of lease form track that list item by item, and the operative section gives notice of the lease and of the leasehold interest while stating that the lease itself controls between the parties. Recording matters because of 27 V.S.A. 342: a lease for more than one year is not effectual to hold the leased estate against any person but the grantor and the grantor's heirs unless acknowledged and recorded. The recorded memorandum, sometimes searched for as a notice of lease or short form lease, protects the leasehold against later purchasers and encumbrancers while the rent and the other business terms stay private in the unrecorded lease agreement.

Recording in the town, not the county

Vermont records land documents with the clerk of the town or city where the property lies; there is no county recording system, so the memorandum names the municipality whose clerk receives it. The statewide recording fee is $15.00 per page under 32 V.S.A. 1671(a), and the form's printed-name lines under each signature serve the name-under-signature practice of 32 V.S.A. 1405. The lessor, the joining spouse, and the lessee each sign before a notary public, and the form carries an acknowledgment certificate for each signer, so the three can acknowledge on different dates, before different notaries, in different states. A memorandum of lease enters Vermont's property transfer tax definitions only when the leasehold it evidences amounts to title to property under 32 V.S.A. 9601(3), a perpetual leasehold or the 50-year and purchase-plus-construction thresholds; the guide walks through those thresholds and the 32 V.S.A. 9608 recording bar that travels with them.

A three-signature architecture

The form recites one lessor, one joining spouse, and one lessee, with twelve numbered sections that collect the 341(c) items, an operative notice section, and the joinder paragraph. It is not set up as a two-lessor instrument: spouses who both hold record title present a co-lessor pattern in which both sign as lessors, and a lessor entity presents no spousal joinder question at all. The configuration here is the sole-title married lessor, the pattern in which the joinder block earns its place in the record.

The download prepares this memorandum as a fillable PDF, together with a completed example showing the form filled in for a Lamoille County fact pattern and a plain-language guide that walks through every numbered section, the three acknowledgments, and the town recording steps. The materials describe Vermont law in general terms and are not legal advice.