Big Horn County Trustee Deed (Husband and Wife) Form

Married couples who put their Wyoming home or land into a joint revocable trust commonly serve as its co-trustees, and when the trust later sells or transfers that property, both of them sign the deed, each as trustee. This Wyoming Trustee Deed is drawn for that pair of signatures: a husband and wife serving together as the trustees of one trust convey the trust's real estate to a grantee, with the special warranty words of Wyoming Statutes 34-2-136 and the homestead release Wyoming conveyances carry.

Two spouses, two trustee signatures, one trust

Section 1 of the deed fixes the configuration in its own text: the grantors are husband and wife, each an individual serving as a trustee of the trust named in Section 2, holding title to the property as trustees of that trust and conveying solely in that capacity. The only entries in that section are the two names and a mailing address. Section 2 identifies the trust by its name and the date of its trust instrument, which together with the trustees' names is the identification Wyoming Statutes 34-2-122 treats as sufficient for real estate held in trust. The conveyance paragraph then adds the one statement a two-trustee deed needs that a one-trustee deed does not: the grantors are all of the currently serving trustees of the trust and act jointly in making the conveyance. Wyoming Statutes 4-10-703 lets cotrustees who cannot reach a unanimous decision act by majority and lets a trustee delegate a function to a cotrustee, but a deed both spouses sign relies on neither rule, and the deed says so.

Each spouse has a signature block headed as first or second grantor, as trustee, and each block is followed by its own acknowledgment certificate. The certificate sentence is the representative-capacity short form from Wyoming Statutes 32-3-115(a)(ii): the officer certifies that the record was acknowledged on a date by the named spouse as trustee of the named trust. The deed prints the words as trustee of inside each certificate, so the officer writes in the trust's name and nothing else about capacity. Two certificates are a design choice, not a statutory command; the short form itself accepts more than one name, and the separate certificates simply let the spouses acknowledge on different days, before different officers, or in different states when travel or health keeps them apart.

Why the homestead release rides along

A trustee deed signed by one trustee has no spouse line, because the trust owns the property and the trustee's own marriage is beside the point. The husband-and-wife configuration is different in one respect: the two people signing as trustees are also, in the common case, the married couple who live in the house. Wyoming Statutes 34-2-121 speaks of every owner or occupant of a homestead and conditions a voluntary sale, mortgage, or other disposition 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. This deed carries that release in its operative paragraph, and both spouses sign and acknowledge, so the words and the signatures the statute names are on the page whether or not a particular parcel turns out to be a homestead. The guide describes the statute and the leading Wyoming homestead-joinder decisions and leaves the application to any one property where it belongs.

A special warranty limited to the trust's own chain

Wyoming deeds carry covenants only through statutory words, since Wyoming Statutes 34-1-135 implies none in a conveyance of land other than minerals. This deed conveys and specially warrants against all who claim by, through, or under the grantors, but against none other. Wyoming Statutes 34-2-137(a) gives a deed in that form the effect of a fee simple conveyance with its appurtenances, rights, and privileges, together with the grantors' covenant that the property is free of encumbrances they made and that they will warrant and defend the title against anyone claiming through them. A title problem that arose before the trust took the property is outside the covenant, which is what trustees can promise when they are passing along a title the trust received from someone else. Exceptions go in Section 7, placed after the legal description as 34-2-137(b) contemplates: recorded easements and covenants, the year's taxes, a mortgage the buyer assumes, or pore space the trust keeps, since under Wyoming Statutes 34-1-152 a surface conveyance carries the pore space beneath it unless the deed excludes it.

At the Wyoming county clerk's counter

The grantee's mailing address appears in Section 3 because Wyoming Statutes 34-1-119(a) keeps the clerk from recording a deed until it is furnished. A sworn Statement of Consideration on the State Board of Equalization's form accompanies the deed under Wyoming Statutes 34-1-142, which bars the clerk from accepting a transfer instrument for record until the completed statement arrives; a sale by trustees for a price is disclosed on it in full. The statutory recording fee runs by the page, with small add-ons for extra surnames and extra lots or tracts, and no Wyoming transfer tax or documentary stamp applies. The first page of the deed leaves its top two inches open for the recording label, with one-inch margins and twelve-point type throughout, which meets the margin and type-size figures in the standards Natrona, Sweetwater, and Campbell Counties publish.

What this configuration recites

The form recites exactly two grantors, husband and wife, each a trustee of the same trust, and leaves the receiving side open to one grantee, two grantees with the vesting words Wyoming recognizes, an entity, or the trustee of another trust. The patterns that present this configuration are familiar in Wyoming county records: a couple selling the residence their joint revocable trust has held since they funded it, spouses named together as trustees of a trust a parent created conveying trust land to a buyer, and a couple deeding a parcel out of their trust back to themselves individually ahead of a refinance whose lender wants title out of trust. The form is not set up as a conveyance by one trustee alone, by cotrustees who are not married to each other, by three or more cotrustees, by a bank or trust company serving as trustee, or by a personal representative of an estate, whose authority comes from the Wyoming Probate Code rather than the Uniform Trust Code. The certification of trust a buyer's title company may ask for under Wyoming Statutes 4-10-1014 is prepared separately and is not part of this package.

The download delivers the fillable trustee deed, a completed example filled in for a realistic Laramie County sale by two spouse-trustees, and the guide, which covers each numbered section, the cotrustee and homestead statutes, the two acknowledgment certificates, and the trip to the county clerk. Both the guide and this page explain the form and the Wyoming statutes behind it in general terms only and are not legal advice.