A transition membrane element designated as CLM which has variable mid-side nodes with drilling freedoms has been presented in this paper. The functional for the linear problem, in which the drilling rotations are introduced as independent variables, has been formulated. The transition elements with variable side nodes can be efficiently used in the local mesh refinement for the in-plane structures, which have stress concentrations. A modified Gaussian quadrature is needed to be adopted to evaluate the stiffness matrices of these transition elements mainly due to the slope discontinuity of displacement within the elements. Detailed numerical studies show the excellent performance of the new transition elements developed in this study.