Recorder of deeds

Last updated
Portrait of Frederick Douglass in the D.C. Recorder of Deeds Building. Frederick Douglass was the first recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia. Frederick Douglass (1).jpg
Portrait of Frederick Douglass in the D.C. Recorder of Deeds Building. Frederick Douglass was the first recorder of deeds for the District of Columbia.

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.

Contents

Background

The offices with similar duties (varying by jurisdiction) include registrar general, register of deeds, registrar of deeds, registrar of titles. The office of such an official may be referred to as the deeds registry or deeds office. In the United States, the recorder of deeds is often an elected county office and is called the county recorder. In some U.S. states, the functions of a recorder of deeds are a responsibility of the county clerk (or the county's clerk of court), and the official may be called a clerk-recorder or recorder-clerk.

The recorder of deeds provides a single location in which records of real property rights are recorded and may be researched by interested parties. The record of deeds often maintains documents regularly recorded by the recorder of deeds, including deeds, mortgages, mechanic's liens, releases and plats, among others. To allow full access to deeds recorded throughout the office history, several indexes may be maintained, which include grantor–grantee indexes, tract indexes, and plat maps. Storage methods to record registry entries include paper, microform, and computer.

The principles of statutory, case, and common law are given effect by the recorder of deeds, insofar as it relates to vested ownership in land and other real rights. Because estate in land can be held in so many complex ways, a single deeds registry provides some clarity, even though it cannot "guarantee" those real property rights.

The legal certainty provided by a title deed issued under the registration of the recorder of deeds is of great significance to all parties who hold, or wish to acquire rights in real property. Certainty of title is the basis for the investment of massive amounts of money in real estate development for residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural use each year. This is why the meticulous recording of registration information by the recorder of deeds is so important.

Each document recorded against title to real estate can be examined and the portion of the bundle of rights that it includes can be determined. These records can assist interested parties in researching the history of land and the chain of title for any property and purpose.

Philippines: Registry of Deeds

The Registry of Deeds exists in almost all cities and municipalities in the Philippines and it has a primary duty of registering and keeping all documents pertaining to transfer of real property and issuance of certificates of land title, whether original, transfer or condominium as well as chattel mortgage papers. The said agency is under the supervision of the Land Registration Authority, Department of Justice.

South Africa: Deeds Registry

The South African system of deeds registry is unique in that it is associated with tenure security. When conveyancers transfer title, they are expected to follow rigid procedures which involve ensuring the title and the property comply with all the relevant legislation and regulations, leading to a high degree of certainty and accuracy. Recent concerns about the standard of legal education in South Africa, however, has raised concerns about whether this is still the case. [1] The South African Registrar of Deeds is responsible for the national system of deeds offices which, through a juristic foundation and long-standing practices and procedures, has the effect of “guaranteeing” title. [2]

The Deeds Registries Act and Sectional Titles Act are applied to regulate the deeds registry system, and form the foundation of land registration in South Africa.

United States: Recorders of Deeds

In the U.S., most recorders of deeds are elected officials who serve the area of a county or equivalent jurisdiction.

In some states, the recorder of deeds may also act as a public posting place for documents that are not directly related to estates in land, such as corporate charters, military discharges, Uniform Commercial Code records, applications for marriage licenses, and judgments.

Deeds in a few states of the U.S. are maintained under the Torrens title system or some limited implementation of it. (For example: Minnesota, some property in Massachusetts, Colorado, Hawaii, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington.)

Other U.S. states maintain their deeds under the common law system of record title. Typically, they are filed in chronological order with a grantor/grantee index.

Recorders/registers of deeds who became prominent in politics

District of Columbia

Elsewhere in the US

Spain

See also

Related Research Articles

In common law and statutory law, a life estate is the ownership of immovable property for the duration of a person's life. In legal terms, it is an estate in real property that ends at death, when the property rights may revert to the original owner or to another person. The owner of a life estate is called a "life tenant". The person who will take over the rights upon death is said to have a "remainder" interest and is known as a "remainderman".

Adverse possession, sometimes colloquially described as "squatter's rights", is a legal principle in common law under which a person who does not have legal title to a piece of property—usually land —may acquire legal ownership based on continuous possession or occupation of the property without the permission (licence) of its legal owner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lord of the manor</span> Landholder of a rural estate

Lord of the manor is a title that, in Anglo-Saxon England and Norman England, referred to the landholder of a rural estate. The titles date to the English feudal system. The lord enjoyed manorial rights as well as seignory, the right to grant or draw benefit from the estate. The title is not a peerage or title of nobility but was a relationship to land and how it could be used and those living on the land (tenants) may be deployed, and the broad estate and its inhabitants administered. The title continues in modern England and Wales as a legally recognised form of property that can be held independently of its other property rights. It may belong entirely to one person or be a moiety shared with other people. The title is known as Breyr in Welsh.

Torrens title is a land registration and land transfer system, in which a state creates and maintains a register of land holdings, which serves as the conclusive evidence of title of the person recorded on the register as the proprietor (owner), and of all other interests recorded on the register.

Civil registration is the system by which a government records the vital events of its citizens and residents. The resulting repository or database has different names in different countries and even in different subnational jurisdictions. It can be called a civil registry, civil register, vital records, and other terms, and the office responsible for receiving the registrations can be called a bureau of vital statistics, registry of vital records and statistics, registrar, registry, register, registry office, or population registry. The primary purpose of civil registration is to create a legal document that can be used to establish and protect the rights of individuals. A secondary purpose is to create a data source for the compilation of vital statistics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cadastre</span> Comprehensive register of the real estate or real propertys metes-and-bounds of a country

A cadastre or cadaster is a comprehensive recording of the real estate or real property's metes-and-bounds of a country. Often it is represented graphically in a cadastral map.

His Majesty's Land Registry is a non-ministerial department of His Majesty's Government, created in 1862 to register the ownership of land and property in England and Wales. It reports to the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government. The registry contains 87% of land in the UK as of 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Deeds registration</span>

Deeds registration is a land management system whereby all important instruments which relate to the common law title to parcels of land are registered on a government-maintained register, to facilitate the transfer of title. The system had been used in some common law jurisdictions and continues to be used in some jurisdictions, including most of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Land Registration Act 2002</span> United Kingdom legislation

The Land Registration Act 2002 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which repealed and replaced previous legislation governing land registration, in particular the Land Registration Act 1925, which governed an earlier, though similar, system. The Act, together with the Land Registration Rules, regulates the role and practice of HM Land Registry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General Register Office</span> Civil registries in Commonwealth-related nations

General Register Office or General Registry Office (GRO) is the name given to the civil registry in the United Kingdom, many other Commonwealth nations and Ireland. The GRO is the government agency responsible for the recording of vital records such as births, deaths, and marriages, which may also include adoptions, stillbirths, civil unions, etc., and historically, sometimes included records relating to deeds and other property transactions.

Land registration is any of various systems by which matters concerning ownership, possession, or other rights in land are formally recorded to provide evidence of title, facilitate transactions, and prevent unlawful disposal. The information recorded and the protection provided by land registration varies widely by jurisdiction.

In real estate business and law, a title search or property title search is the process of examining public records and retrieving documents on the history of a piece of real property to determine and confirm property's legal ownership, and find out what claims or liens are on the property. A title search is also performed when an owner wishes to sell mortgage property and the bank requires the owner to insure this transaction.

Australian property law, or property law in Australia, are laws that regulate and prioritise the rights, interests and responsibilities of individuals in relation to "things" (property). These things are forms of "property" or "rights" to possession or ownership of an object. Property law orders or prioritises rights and classifies property as either real and tangible, such as land, or intangible, such as the right of an author to their literary works or personal but tangible, such as a book or a pencil. The scope of what constitutes a thing capable of being classified as property and when an individual or body corporate gains priority of interest over a thing has in legal scholarship been heavily debated on a philosophical level.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Registers of Scotland</span>

Registers of Scotland (RoS) is the non-ministerial department of the Scottish Government responsible for compiling and maintaining records relating to property and other legal documents. They currently maintain 21 public registers. The official responsible with maintaining the Registers of Scotland is the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland. By ex officio, the Keeper of the Registers of Scotland is also the Deputy Keeper of the Great Seal of Scotland. The Keeper of the Registers of Scotland should not be confused with the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) is an American privately held corporation. MERS is a separate and distinct corporation that serves as a nominee on mortgages after the turn of the century and is owned by holding company MERSCORP Holdings, Inc., which owns and operates an electronic registry known as the MERS system, which is designed to track servicing rights and ownership of mortgages in the United States. According to the Department of the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, MERS is an agent for lenders without any reference to MERS as a principal. On October 5, 2018, Intercontinental Exchange and MERS announced that ICE had acquired all of MERS.

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.

Formalities in English law are required in some kinds of transaction by English contract law and trusts law. In a limited number of cases, agreements and trusts will be unenforceable unless they meet a certain form prescribed by statute. The main kinds of formality that a statute can require are to put the transaction in writing, to make a deed, or to register it at a government registrar.

A clerk is a senior official of many municipal governments in the English-speaking world. In some communities, including most in the United States, the position is elected, but in many others, the clerk is appointed to their post. In the UK, a town or parish clerk is appointed by the town or parish council members. In almost all cases, the actual title of the clerk reflects the type of municipality they work for; thus, instead of simply being known as the clerk, the position is generally referred to as the town clerk, township clerk, city clerk, village clerk, borough clerk, board secretary, or county clerk. Other titles also exist, such as recorder and corporate officer. The office has existed for centuries, though in some places it is now being merged with other positions.

The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk (RR/CC) is one of 37 departments in Los Angeles County, California which serves a population of over 10 million. The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk is responsible for registering voters, maintaining voter files, administering federal, state, local and special elections and verifying initiatives, referendums and recall petitions. Los Angeles County is the largest and most complex county election jurisdiction in the country with over 500 political districts and 4.85 million registered voters. The Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk also records real property documents; maintains vital records of births, deaths and marriages; issues marriage licenses; performs civil marriage ceremonies; oversees countywide records management and archives programs and processes business filings and other documents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flexible Land Tenure System (Namibia)</span>

The Flexible Land Tenure System (FLTS) is an innovative concept to provide affordable security of tenure to inhabitants in informal settlements in Namibia.

References

  1. "A fact or a fallacy? - GhostDigest". www.ghostdigest.com. Retrieved 2018-09-06.
  2. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-22. Retrieved 2018-09-06.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 White Folks, like Colored Folks, Have Their Troubles : Officers in the Twentieth Are Jealous of Funston. Plaindealer (Topeka, Kansas). Friday, October 27, 1899. Volume: I. Issue: 43 Page: 1. Piece: One of Four
  4. Meier, August. Negro thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial ideologies in the age of Booker T. Washington. Vol. 118. University of Michigan Press, 1963. pp. 234, 252
  5. "Clipping from The Pittsburgh Courier". The Pittsburgh Courier. 12 August 1944. p. 1.
  6. "Clipping from The Pittsburgh Courier". The Pittsburgh Courier. 12 August 1944. p. 5.

Commons-logo.svg Media related to Recorder of deeds at Wikimedia Commons Recording process:

Directory:

Organizations:

Specific offices:

Commercial Online Providers:

Software and Service Providers:

South Africa:

Ukraine: