With those transfers you need to be very careful.?ÿ
I got into a case that was quite a mess. Much like your ownership the intention was to grant from Jones to Smith a tract. Then Smith to Johnson so then Johnson ended up being the owner. Deeds were drawn up and taken to the Clerk.?ÿ
They were given to the Clerk just as they should have been Jones to Smith then Smith to Johnson.?ÿ
They were taken to the pile of filings and were later put into the books of deeds.?ÿ
But in Book 500 of Deeds, Page 745 they filed Smith to Johnson, then a few days later in Book 501 of Deeds, Page 20 they recorded Jones to Smith.?ÿ
Smith didn't own the land for the first recording so at the end of the day the Jones to Smith deed was valid and Smith became the owner. This mistake was discovered years later. By then Smith was the only living person left. He was good enough to grant a QC to Johnson's heirs, but he could well have made a stink if he had wanted to.
I advise my clients to take the first deed to the clerk, wait a few days and then take the second deed and be sure the first one got recorded.?ÿ
You can explain to the person at the desk what you are doing but the recorder was always the person in the vault with really nice handwriting that recorded the deeds and wasn't there when you dropped off the deeds.?ÿ?ÿ
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Doesn't doctrine of after-acquired title fix that??ÿ Unless they were QCD.
Quit claims are always made by one party, the party quitting their claim. The defacto second party is typically the neighbor where the dispute (or overlap occurs).
Maybe I am missing something here, but if the southern party (or even the northern party) quit their claim to the land between the fences, why is this going to court? It should already be resolved.
@bill93?ÿ
I left it up to the title people, even after all those years it was big enough of a deal the title company spent money to fix it. Doesn't happen often.?ÿ
Here's a good one involving the after-acquired title doctrine: https://www.williamsmullen.com/news/bank-learns-hard-way-about-after-acquired-title-and-priority
Why would it need to be valid? Like giving yourself an easement; you don't need to give yourself permission to use your own property. Therefor relinquishing the validity...
Quit claims are always made by one party, the party quitting their claim.
A QCD grants whatever rights the first party has in a property, if any, TO a second named party, without guaranteeing that they have any rights to transfer.
If you quit claim to yourself you have accomplished nothing, except as has been pointed out create a record describing a piece of land and getting your name mentioned on that same piece of paper.
The person may consider that to be notice they are claiming the described land, but it should not be given any other significance.
@mightymoe Fortunately, in California, we can show up at the Recorder's counter and request a Conformed Copy along with the receipts for deeds.?ÿ They are recorded, and assigned Document #s on the spot.?ÿ I suppose this is the result of lessons learned.
That would be nice, each courthouse here is different, I've been in some walking by the stack of "to be recorded" docs and cringed each time.?ÿ
@pabdbfinc Building on what @bill93 wrote, I expect that in every state of the US the required elements of a deed include a grantor and a grantee (and "quitclaim" in the context of real estate actions is just short for "quitclaim deed"). And a de facto second party? Imagine this situation:
Someone owns a landlocked parcel, with multiple abutters, and let's say the parcel is oddly shaped (so that there would be no obvious way to assign portions to the abutters). This owner then, as grantor, records a document stating that he's relinquishing all his rights and claims to the parcel, without mentioning any grantee(s). Who now owns the parcel?
Also, use of a quitclaim deed doesn't necessarily mean that there's a dispute nor that the grantee is a neighbor. It just means that the grantor is unwilling to provide any sort of warranty about the title or about encumbrances, nor to defend against title problems or encumbrances. This could be because the grantor is not going to get enough of an economic benefit from the conveyance to make it worthwhile for him to offer any warranty. For example, a landowner might want to make a philanthropic gift of all or a portion of his parcel to a conservation organization (and the organization might not already be a neighbor of the landowner). But, the landowner's generosity goes only as far as the land itself. He's not getting any money for the land, and he figures it would be overly generous to also give promises about the title and possible encumbrances, possibly covering back through the entire history of the land, and binding his heirs to those promises. He's willing to make a gift of the land, but under conditions of "I'm happy for you to have it, go ahead and enjoy it, and good luck to you, but take it as-is, and I don't want to ever hear about it again." Another landowner in my neighborhood made such a gift some years ago and did it on a quitclaim deed (well, this is Massachusetts so what others call a quitclaim deed, our government calls a "release deed," as I mentioned earlier in this thread).
If anyone knows of a deed that does not state any grantees, and particularly one that has held up to the scrutiny of a court, I would be curious to see it.
I would not call it AP unless it was challenged ....its not going to be challenged if no one knows about it. Seems like it puts the world on notice that they think it is theirs. Not unheard of to have a gore between title lines no matter how far back you try and chase title out east here.
I've always understood that for any deed to be valid there has to be compensation. And that you cannot compensate yourself in order to perfect the deed. Of course this rule is from the friendly Washington where doing so would position yourself for a statute of frauds claim.?ÿ
BTW, retirement is going just fine.?ÿ
Usually there is a straw - convey to a second party then back to the first party - in order to help fix / screw up the title for the benefit of the first party.?ÿ Was the Grantor identical to the Grantee??ÿ?ÿ
for any deed to be valid there has to be compensation
I've seen deeds that said "for love and affection"
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doing so would position yourself for a statute of fraud
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So your saying someone can't love themselves?
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While a contract must have consideration to be enforceable, and most deeds do have consideration in fulfillment of a sales contract, I don't think deeds are required to have consideration to be valid. Iowa has specific rules for gift deeds exempting them from taxation, for example.