Iowa Code § 561.4 :
561.4. Selecting--platting
The owner, husband or wife, or a single person, may select the homestead and cause it to be platted, but a failure to do so shall not render the same liable when it otherwise would not be, and a selection by the owner shall control. When selected, it shall be designated by a legal description, or if impossible it shall be marked off by permanent, visible monuments, and the description shall give the direction and distance of the starting point from some corner of the dwelling, which description, with the plat, shall be filed and recorded by the recorder of the proper county in the homestead book, which shall be, as nearly as may be, in the form of the record books for deeds, with an index kept in the same manner.
Last Amended: 2006
2006
CREDIT(S) Amended by Acts 1987 (72 G.A.) ch. 116, s 1; Acts 2006 (81 G.A.) ch. 1031, S.F. 2264, s 13.