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