Big Horn County Correction Deed (Married Couple as Grantors) Form

When two spouses conveyed Wyoming property together and the recorded deed turned out to carry a mistake, the instrument that puts the record right is signed by the same two people. This Wyoming Correction Deed is built for exactly that configuration: a married couple as grantors, each signing, each acknowledging before a notarial officer, re-conveying the same property to the same grantee under the corrected terms.

Two signatures that restate one conveyance

The deed opens with a fixed statement that the grantors are married to each other and sign together as grantors. It then identifies the deed being corrected, called the Prior Deed, by its title, its date, its recording date, the grantors and grantees exactly as that deed named them, its recording reference, and the county whose clerk recorded it. A separate section states the error the Prior Deed contains and what the record is corrected to say, and the property section carries the full legal description as corrected, together with the street address and parcel number.

The operative section does the legal work in one sentence. For the purpose of correcting the identified error, and without added consideration, the grantors convey and quitclaim to the grantee all of their interest in the property as corrected, and ratify and confirm the Prior Deed as corrected. The quitclaim words are the words of Wyoming's statutory quitclaim form, W.S. 34-2-104, and under W.S. 34-2-105 a deed in that form passes all of the grantors' then existing legal and equitable rights without reaching title acquired later. Because W.S. 34-1-135 implies no covenant in a Wyoming conveyance of real estate other than minerals, the correction deed adds no warranty of its own; whatever covenants the Prior Deed carried stay with that instrument, which remains of record.

Why both spouses sign

Wyoming's homestead statute, W.S. 34-2-121, conditions a conveyance of a homestead on an instrument that contains in substance the words hereby releasing and waiving all rights under and by virtue of the homestead exemption laws of this state, freely and voluntarily signed and acknowledged by the owner and the owner's spouse. The section's title states the consequence of noncompliance as voidness, and its one exception, in the statute's own words, is a conveyance directly from husband to wife. This deed prints the release in the statute's words and carries a signature block and an acknowledgment certificate for each spouse, so the corrected conveyance of record carries both signatures and the release the statute names.

The two certificates are the form's own design rather than a statutory count: the Wyoming short form in W.S. 32-3-115(a)(i), which the certificate sentence reproduces, accepts the names of one or more persons in a single certificate. Separate certificates let the spouses acknowledge on different dates, before different officers, or in different states, each certificate stating the county and state where that act was performed as W.S. 32-3-114 requires.

The one Wyoming statute that names a correcting instrument

Wyoming has no correction deed statute and no re-recording statute; the instrument rests on the state's general conveyancing law and on the common-law practice of re-executing a deed to cure a mistake of record. The one place the Wyoming Statutes describe this class of instrument is the Statement of Consideration law. W.S. 34-1-142 requires a sworn statement from the grantee with every transfer instrument presented for recording, and subsection (c)(i) lets the presenting party omit the amount paid, the terms of sale, and the value of nonreal property for an instrument which confirms, corrects, modifies or supplements a previously recorded instrument without added consideration. The deed states, in those terms, that it confirms and corrects the Prior Deed without added consideration and that the consideration is the consideration the Prior Deed recites. The statement still accompanies the deed, because W.S. 34-1-142(b) provides that no transfer instrument is accepted for recording until the completed statement is received.

What a correction deed settles and what it leaves to a court

A correction deed is a consensual instrument. It carries the grantors' signatures, states the error as a matter of fact, and re-conveys under the corrected description; the grantee does not sign. Where the parties disagree about what the Prior Deed was meant to say, Wyoming's remedy is reformation by a court, which the Wyoming Supreme Court conditions on clear and convincing evidence of a mutual mistake (Sanders v. Sanders, 2010 WY 77, 234 P.3d 343; Schulz v. Miller, 837 P.2d 71 (Wyo. 1992)). The deed also leaves the Prior Deed in the record: under W.S. 34-1-121(a) each recorded instrument is notice from its own delivery to the county clerk, so the correction deed gives notice of the corrected terms from the day it is recorded, and a title examiner reads the two instruments together.

The married-couple configuration

The form recites exactly two grantors, married to each other, and no other signing capacity. Spouses who gave a warranty deed with a block number copied wrong, spouses whose recorded deed misspelled a grantee's name, and spouses whose deed omitted the plat reference present the two-grantor pattern this deed recites; so does a deed of homestead property that one spouse signed alone, because this instrument carries both signatures and the homestead release as a present conveyance of whatever interest the grantors hold. The form is not set up as a single-grantor instrument, as a deed from co-owners who are not married to each other, as a deed from a trustee, an entity, or an attorney-in-fact, or as a deed that changes who takes or how much passes over a grantee's objection. Each of those is a different configuration with a different recital and a different execution.

Recording in the Wyoming county where the land lies

The deed goes to the county clerk of the county where the property is located, the same office that holds the Prior Deed. Wyoming sets recording fees statewide at twelve dollars for the first page and three dollars for each additional page under W.S. 18-3-402(a)(xvi), and the clerk records an originally signed document once the grantee's address is furnished under W.S. 34-1-119(a). The form reserves two inches at the top of its first page for the clerk's recording label and keeps one-inch margins and twelve-point type elsewhere, inside every published rule of the state's largest counties, and its instructions cover page, which is not recorded, describes how an entry that outgrows its space continues on a recorded exhibit page.

The package includes the fillable correction deed, a completed example filled in for a Laramie County fact pattern in which a married couple corrects the block number in the legal description of a recorded warranty deed, and the guide that walks through every section, the signing formalities, and the recording process. This description and the guide describe the form and the governing Wyoming law in general terms; they are not legal advice.