Survivorship needs to be in the deed
Many Vermont property owners hold real estate jointly with another person, often a spouse. If the deed includes a right of survivorship, ownership automatically passes to the surviving owner upon death, and probate is usually not required for the real estate itself. The surviving owner records a death certificate in the town land records, and title vests fully in the survivor — one of the simplest and most common ways Vermont real estate transfers after death.
Tenancy by the entirety has three specific requirements
When a married couple takes title as tenants by the entirety, survivorship is presumed automatically. To be valid, though, three specific conditions have to be met: the couple must actually be married to each other at the time the property is conveyed to them, they must take title in the same deed, and they must have equal interests in the property. Property that passes to a surviving spouse this way isn't part of the probate estate at all.
Divorce ends it at a precise moment
Vermont's rule on this is genuinely clean and precise: tenancy by the entirety terminates upon death, divorce, or agreement of the owners — meaning both spouses sign a deed specifically terminating the tenancy. Upon divorce, the tenancy converts automatically, at the exact moment the judge signs the divorce decree, into a tenancy in common between the former spouses. No further paperwork or action is needed to accomplish that conversion; it happens by operation of law the instant the decree is signed.
Ordinary joint tenancy for any number of co-owners
Separate from tenancy by the entirety, any number of people — married or not — can take title as joint tenants, as long as each owner holds an equal interest in the real estate. This gives unmarried co-owners, or groups of more than two people, a straightforward path to survivorship that doesn't depend on marriage at all.
Tenancy in common as the fallback
Without survivorship language in the deed, Vermont real estate owned by two or more people is presumed to be a tenancy in common. A deceased owner's share in a tenancy in common passes through their own individual estate — typically through probate — rather than automatically to the other co-owners.
A distinctive alternative for real estate
Vermont doesn't offer a transfer-on-death deed, but it does offer its own genuinely distinctive statutory tool for keeping real estate out of probate. See our guide to the Vermont Enhanced Life Estate Deed for how that tool works alongside these joint ownership rules.