In English law, a fee simple or fee simple absolute is an estate in land, a form of freehold ownership. A "fee" is a vested, inheritable, present possessory interest in land. A "fee simple" is real property held without limit of time under common law, whereas the highest possible form of ownership is a "fee simple absolute", which is without limitations on the land's use.
A mortgage is a legal instrument of the common law which is used to create a security interest in real property held by a lender as a security for a debt, usually a mortgage loan. Hypothec is the corresponding term in civil law jurisdictions, albeit with a wider sense, as it also covers non-possessory lien.
A deed is a legal document that is signed and delivered, especially concerning the ownership of property or legal rights. Specifically, in common law, a deed is any legal instrument in writing which passes, affirms or confirms an interest, right, or property and that is signed, attested, delivered, and in some jurisdictions, sealed. It is commonly associated with transferring (conveyancing) title to property. The deed has a greater presumption of validity and is less rebuttable than an instrument signed by the party to the deed. A deed can be unilateral or bilateral. Deeds include conveyances, commissions, licenses, patents, diplomas, and conditionally powers of attorney if executed as deeds. The deed is the modern descendant of the medieval charter, and delivery is thought to symbolically replace the ancient ceremony of livery of seisin.
Recorder of deeds or deeds registry is a government office tasked with maintaining public records and documents, especially records relating to real estate ownership that provide persons other than the owner of a property with real rights over that property.
A bill of sale is a document that transfers ownership of goods from one person to another. It is used in situations where the former owner transfers possession of the goods to a new owner. Bills of sale may be used in a wide variety of transactions: to sell goods, exchange, give, or mortgage objects. They can be used only to transfer ownership of goods that people already own or to transfer ownership of moveable tangible goods and only by individuals and unincorporated businesses.
Seisin is a legal concept that denotes the right to legal possession of a thing, usually a fiefdom, fee, or an estate in land. It is similar, but legally separate from the idea of ownership.
Sasine in Scots law is the delivery of feudal property, typically land.
Generally, a quitclaim is a formal renunciation of a legal claim against some other person, or of a right to land. A person who quitclaims renounces or relinquishes a claim to some legal right, or transfers a legal interest in land. Originally a common-law concept dating back to Medieval England, the expression is in modern times mostly restricted to North American law, where it often refers specifically to a transfer of ownership or some other interest in real property.
A gift, in the law of property, is the voluntary and immediate transfer of property from one person to another without consideration. There are several type of gifts in property law, most notably inter vivos gifts which are made in the donor's lifetime and causa mortis (deathbed) gifts which are made in expectation of the donor's imminent death. Both types of gifts share three elements which must be met in order for the gift to be legally effective: donative intent, the delivery of the gift to the donee, and the acceptance of the gift. In addition to those elements, causa mortis gifts require that the donor must die of the impending peril that he or she had contemplated when making the gift.
In the common law of England, the doctrine of worthier title was a legal doctrine that preferred taking title to real estate by descent over taking title by devise or by purchase. It essentially provides that a remainder cannot be created in the grantor's heirs, at least not by those words.
A restraint on alienation, in the law of real property, is a clause used in the conveyance of real property that seeks to prohibit the recipient from selling or otherwise transferring their interest in the property. Under the common law such restraints are void as against the public policy of allowing landowners to freely dispose of their property. Perhaps the ultimate restraint on alienation was the fee tail, a form of ownership which required that property be passed down in the same family from generation to generation, which has also been widely abolished.
A grant deed is used in some states and jurisdictions for the sale or other transfer of real property from one person or entity to another person or entity. Each party transferring an interest in the property, or "grantor", is required to sign it. The signatures must be acknowledged before a notary public or other official authorized by law to administer oaths.
A lease and release is a form of conveyance of real property involving the lease of land by its owner to a tenant, followed by a release (relinquishment) of the landlord's interest in the property to the tenant. This sequence of transactions was commonly used to transfer full freehold title to real estate under real property law. The lease and release was a mode of conveyance of freehold estates formerly common in England and in New York. Between its parties it achieves the same outcome as a deed of grant/transfer/conveyance.
The Law of Property Act 1925 is a statute of the United Kingdom Parliament. It forms part of an interrelated programme of legislation introduced by Lord Chancellor Lord Birkenhead between 1922 and 1925. The programme was intended to modernise the English law of real property. The Act deals principally with the transfer of freehold or leasehold land by deed.
A freehold, in common law jurisdictions or Commonwealth countries such as England and Wales, Australia, Canada, Ireland, India and the United States, is the common mode of ownership of real property, or land, and all immovable structures attached to such land.
A deed of trust refers to a type of legal instrument which is used to create a security interest in real property and real estate. In a deed of trust, a person who wishes to borrow money conveys legal title in real property to a trustee, who holds the property as security for a loan (debt) from the lender to the borrower. The equitable title remains with the borrower. The borrower is referred to as the trustor, while the lender is referred to as the beneficiary.
The shelter rule is a doctrine in the common law of property under which a grantee who has received an interest in property from a bona fide purchaser will also be protected as a bona fide purchaser, even if the grantee would not legally qualify for this status. The grantee is "sheltered" from other claims by the grantor's status as an actual bona fide purchaser.
The vast majority of states in the United States employ a system of recording legal instruments that affect the title of real estate as the exclusive means for publicly documenting land titles and interests. The record title system differs significantly from land registration systems, such as the Torrens system, that have been adopted in a few states. The principal difference is that the recording system does not determine who owns the title or interest involved, which is ultimately established through litigation in the courts. The system provides a framework for determining who the law will protect in relation to those titles and interests when a dispute arises.
The Rule in Shelley's Case is a rule of law that may apply to certain future interests in real property and trusts created in common law jurisdictions. It was applied as early as 1366 in The Provost of Beverly's Case but in its present form is derived from Shelley's Case (1581), in which counsel stated the rule as follows:
when the ancestor by any gift or conveyance takes an estate of freehold, and in the same gift or conveyance an estate is limited either mediately or immediately to his heirs in fee simple or in fee tail; that always in such cases, "the heirs" are words of limitation of the estate, not words of purchase.
In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, refers to parcels of land and any associated structures which are the property of a person. For a structure to be considered part of the real property, it must be integrated with or affixed to the land. This includes crops, buildings, machinery, wells, dams, ponds, mines, canals, and roads. The term is historic, arising from the now-discontinued form of action, which distinguished between real property disputes and personal property disputes. Personal property, or personalty, was, and continues to be, all property that is not real property.
