Vermont Special Warranty Deed (Joint Grantors)

Two record owners convey together on this deed. The form is Vermont's special warranty deed built for joint grantors: two grantor sections, two signature lines, and a full notary acknowledgment certificate for each signer, so a pair of co-owners passes their combined interest in one recorded instrument. The covenants run from both grantors, bind them jointly and severally, and stop at the edge of their own time in title.

Two grantors, one conveyance

The deed recites exactly two grantors, each an individual conveying in a personal capacity, and a single grantee section carrying the new owners' names and the vesting words they take under. Both grantors sign, and because co-owners often acknowledge at different times or in different places, the form carries a separate certificate for each signature, each set out in the statutory short form of Section 5368 of Title 26, with lines for the notary's printed name and commission number. Familiar pairs present this pattern in Vermont land records: siblings conveying property they inherited as tenants in common, a married couple selling a home held as tenants by the entirety, and two co-investors ending a joint venture. When the grantors are married to each other, their two signatures also supply the spousal joinder that 27 V.S.A. Sections 141 and 349 attach to homestead and entireties property. For the rarer case, a grantor whose spouse is not the other grantor and whose homestead is being conveyed, the deed adds a labeled joining spouse block with its own certificate. The form is not set up as a deed for one owner, for three or more co-owners, or for an entity or fiduciary seller; those configurations recite different parties than this deed carries.

Covenants from both grantors that stop with their ownership

Vermont writes warranty scope onto the face of a deed; no general statute implies covenants from an operative word alone. This deed states that the grantors are lawfully seized, hold good right and title to convey, and pass the property free from encumbrances they made or suffered except as the deed lists, then confines the duty to warrant and defend to claims arising by, through, or under the grantors or either of them. Vermont practice also labels the same instrument a limited warranty deed. The two-grantor version adds one point of reach: because both owners join in a single set of covenants, a claim traceable to either co-owner's period of ownership falls inside the promise, while anything older than the chain they share stays outside it.

One deed, one town clerk, one tax return

Vermont land records live with municipal clerks rather than county recorders, so the signed deed is presented for recording in the town or city where the property sits, at the statewide fee of fifteen dollars per page. Each grantor's acknowledgment before a notary public is the execution formality 27 V.S.A. Section 341(a) sets for deeds, and recording is what extends the conveyance's effect beyond the grantors and their heirs under Section 342. A completed Property Transfer Tax Return, Form PTT-172, with its Act 250 certificate, accompanies the deed at the counter; 32 V.S.A. Section 9608 directs clerks to accept no transfer deed without it. The guide in this package covers the return, the current rates and the clean water surcharge, the statutory exemptions, and every numbered section of the deed, along with the co-ownership vesting forms available to the grantees under 27 V.S.A. Section 2.

The download delivers three pieces: the special warranty deed as a fillable PDF, a completed example presenting a two-grantor Chittenden County transfer of inherited property, and a plain language guide covering completion, signing, and municipal recording. These materials describe Vermont law generally and are not legal advice; questions about a particular title or transfer belong with a Vermont attorney.