Skip to main content

Deeds

 


If you have ever played Monopoly, you have at least a grade-school level idea of what deeds are. In the real world they are a little more complicated.

If you own property, chances are you have a deed or deeds for it. There are other ways to acquire property but in America, most property transactions involve deeds. But what does all that language on a deed mean? People go through a realtor and/or a title company when they buy property, and they know a deed is one of those many pieces of paper (or electronic screens) that have to be signed.  What I saw a lot in my career as a Cartographer for a county Assessor’s Office is that mistakes were made because people did not understand what was on a deed. And when I say “people” I am including lawyers. There are lawyers who specialize in property matters and they are generally very good at what they do. The problem is when lawyers who do not specialize in property matters step outside their lane. You would not necessarily want a brain surgeon to do your face lift. If a deed gets messed up, it will be expensive to fix it, if it even can be fixed.

Parts of a deed (different states have different requirements):

Grantor/grantee: The grantor is the person who is selling or deeding away the property. The grantee is the person receiving the property. If you own your home and dig out the deed for your property, you would be the grantee. How you write the names is important. If you are listed as Frederick S. Smith Jr. as grantee, when you go to sell it if you just say Fred Smith, you, and the new grantees will have some problems. You need to sell it with the same name that was listed when you bought it.

Consideration: This is just a fancy word for cost. How much did you pay for the property. The consideration has to be stated even if it is $0.

Legal description: This is the legal definition that locates the property, where it is and what it measures out to. This gets people in trouble sometimes, because the lay person (and some lawyers) don’t know how to read or write a legal description. The legal description must define that property and only that property. There is a proper format the legal descriptions must be in. You cannot use an address or a tax ID number. There are three basic types of legal descriptions:

1.    Subdivision lot and block: If your property is in a recorded subdivision, congratulations! You have property with generally the easiest form of legal description. If the subdivision is called Eagle Acres and you own lot 4, the legal description that would go on the deed would just be “Lot 4, Eagle Acres as recorded in (your county and your state)”

2.    Aliquot Parts: This gets more complicated. The US Government surveyed most of the country and divided land defined by Township, Range and Section (this does not apply to the eastern states). A section is a surveyed square mile, and its location would be defined by what Township and Range it is in. So, an Aliquot part description would be for if you owned a full section or a quarter or a half of the section etc. in a particular Township and Range.

3.    Metes and Bounds: This literally means measurements and boundaries. For each side or leg of your property the bearing and distance will be given. From the point of beginning it might go “North 23 degrees, 12 minutes, 45 seconds East, 112.25 feet” A similar record would be written for each boundary line of your property. But sometimes a boundary is a river or a road. This would not have to have specific measurements, it could simply give a bearing “to the road, thence westerly along the road . . .” to a specific point. Metes and bounds legal descriptions can get quite convoluted. I have seen a description of just one property that went on for three full pages. These are the kind of things for which you need an expert.

 

In our office we read every deed that got recorded in our county, so we got to where we could recognize when something was wrong, where they were doing something that they did not intend (you probably did not intend to sell only the west half of your house?). Other times it was difficult to tell if it was intended (They may well have intended to sell the north half of their vacant lot, or maybe the south half got omitted by error). Whenever we found something questionable, we tried to contact the owner, but we were not mind readers. In the end the responsibility for the correctness of the deed falls on the grantor and the grantee and the people who helped them (attorneys, title companies, surveyors etc.) So, I encourage you to always get the best experts you can find. Get references. Your property is probably the most valuable thing you own. It is worth paying extra to get the best advice.

Star Liner

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove

  Despite both of us having science backgrounds, my wife and I share a leaning toward the artistic, though we may express it in different ways. In her life, my wife has been a painter, a poet, a singer, an actor, and a fiction writer. Not to mention a mother. I don’t remember what precipitated this event, but my wife, my son, and I were at home in the front room. My wife was responding to something my son said. She said, “remember, you get half your brains from me. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be a complete idiot.” To which my son started howling with laughter and said to me,” I think you have just been insulted.” Sometimes I feel like Rodney Dangerfield. I get no respect. But that is not an uncommon state of affairs for fatherhood. When my son was going to middle school and high school, my wife was always the one to go in with him to get him registered for classes. One time she was unable to go and I had to be the one to get him registered. “Ugh,” he said. “why can’t Mama do i...
1 comment
Read more

Empathy

  Websters defines Empathy as: “the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another.” Empathy is what makes us human, though lord knows there are many humans who don’t seem to have any. A person without empathy is like a caveman, only concerned for himself. Selfish. It is a lack of community and by extension, a lack of the need for civilization. The person who lacks empathy can have a bit of community, but only with others exactly like himself. It seems like societies go through cycles of empathy and less empathy. Sometimes a single event can change the course of society. Prior to America’s involvement in WWII, the general feeling in America was not very empathetic. We had our own problems. We were still dealing with the lingering effects of the Great Depression, and had been for years. That kind of stress makes it hard to think of others. Hitler was slashing through Europe. He and his fol...
1 comment
Read more

A Deception

  I have a secret. I deceived my mother. Okay, it was like 50 years ago and she is gone now, but still . . .  I was generally a good boy. I did as I was told. My family lived a pretty strait-laced, middle-class, fairly conservative life. We were a G-rated family, well, until my older siblings broke the mold, but at this time, I was still in the mold. My friend Rich and I made a plan. Rich had asked me if I wanted to see Cabaret . He said he didn’t think much of Liza Minnelli, but he wouldn’t mind seeing her take her clothes off. We were like 13 years old and sex was ever-present on our minds as much as it was absent in our households. Cabaret was not rated R. It was rated PG. The ratings system has changed since that time. There was no PG-13; there was just the choice of G, PG, and R  (X was not an official rating).  Apparently the makers of Cabaret satisfied the ratings commission enough to escape an R rating, so it was PG.   There was therefore no law or ...
Post a Comment
Read more