The Vermont Statutes Online

Title 27: Property

Chapter 001: Estates in Real Property

• § 1. Estate in fee tail abolished

  Where, by the common law, a person might become seised in fee tail of lands by virtue of a devise, gift, grant, or other conveyance, or by other means, such person, instead of being seised thereof in fee tail, shall be seised thereof in fee simple. This section shall not change the effect of any instrument made and executed prior to June 1, 1941.

• § 2. Estate in common preferred to joint tenancy; joint tenancy with unequal shares

  (a) Conveyances and devises of lands, whether for years, for life or in fee, made to two or more persons, shall be construed to create estates in common and not in joint tenancy, unless it is expressed therein that the grantees or devisees shall take the lands jointly or as joint tenants or in joint tenancy or to them and the survivors of them. This provision shall not apply to devises or conveyances made in trust or made to spouses or to conveyances in which it manifestly appears from the tenor of the instrument that it was intended to create an estate in joint tenancy.

  (b)(1) An instrument may create a joint tenancy in which the interests of the joint tenants are equal or unequal.

  (2) Unless the instrument creating a joint tenancy contains language indicating a contrary intent:

  (A) It shall be presumed that the joint tenants’ interests are equal.

  (B) Upon the death of a joint tenant, the deceased joint tenant’s interest shall be allocated among the surviving joint tenants, as joint tenants, in proportion to their respective joint interests at the time of the deceased joint tenant’s death. (Amended 2003, No. 150 (Adj. Sess.), § 1.)

• § 3. Effect of overgrant

  A conveyance by a tenant for life or years, purporting to grant a greater estate than he or she possessed or could lawfully convey, shall not work a forfeiture of his or her estate, but shall pass to the grantee the estate which such tenant could lawfully convey.

• § 4. Right of entry for survey

  In cases where the title to lands, tenements, or hereditaments may come in question, or in order to establish boundaries between abutting parcels, a licensed surveyor with the necessary assistants employed by any of the parties to the disputed title may enter upon the lands or real estate or other lands for the purpose of running doubtful or disputed lines and locating or searching for monuments, establishing temporary monuments and ascertaining and deciding the location of the lines and monuments of a survey, doing as little damage as possible to the owners of the lands. (Amended 1985, No. 116 (Adj. Sess.), § 2; 2023, No. 6, § 313, eff. July 1, 2023.)