Land Registration: Historical Challenges and Systems

Land Registration

• Land registration, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries, faced challenges relating to family trusts, particularly regarding inheritance.
• Issues for wives in family trusts surfaced when they were unable to be identified as beneficiaries or trustees, leading to equitable disputes over matrimonial assets, particularly prominent in divorce cases in the 1940s and 1950s.
• The majority of land dealings now involve registered land principles.
• The title to land is recorded, managed, and overseen by a Land Registry.
• This land registration system is categorized as title registration.
• The Torrens title system, developed in South Australia, inspired the registration of ships to a system of colonial land registration.
• The Real Property Act 1858 and other legislation led to today's national registered land title system.
• The previous system of title deeds conveyancing relied on physical copies of title deeds to determine ownership.
• Registration of land became compulsory across England and Wales by December 1990 for all unregistered titles.
• The Land Registration Act 1925 provided the foundational structure, though flawed, for land registration. This structure was refined in the 2002 act.
• The 2002 act significantly improved the system and expanded the categories of interests that can be registered.
• The register records fundamental details about the property including its title, freehold or leasehold, and the planned map from OS (Ordnance Survey).

Why Register Land

• Land registration protects purchasers by ensuring the land is free from encumbrances like mortgages or other claims.
• This approach offers protection for all the interested parties involved in a land transaction.
• Registration safeguards land transactions by clearly documenting ownership and potential liens.

Types of Registrable Estates

• Only certain legal estates (freeholds and leaseholds of more than seven years) are substantively registrable.
• Interests not registrable must still be registered to be legal.
• Dispositions of registered estates, leases of more than seven years, expressly created legal easements, and legal charges(mortgages) are registrable.

Other Third-Party Interests

• Some third-party interests, while not directly registrable, can be protected on the register.
• These interests are protected by being registered against the estate they affect.
• These include trusts, leases of three years or less, and restrictive covenants.

Unregistered Interests That Override

• Certain unregistered interests override registered interests.
• Short leases (seven years or less), implied legal easements, and the interests of people actually occupying the land are examples.

Registration Requirements

• The Land Registration Act 2002 demands subsequent dealings with registered land be completed through registration.
• Sections 27 and 29, in particular, list registrable transactions and impact order of rights.
• The disposition might not be legally valid until registration is completed.

Notice and Restrictions

• The LRA 2002 protects third-party interests through notice or restrictions in the register to specify conditions in which dispositions can occur.
• Notices are entries in the Charges Register to protect certain interests.
• Restrictions are entries recorded in the Proprietorship Register and restrain the disposal of a property unless certain conditions are met.

Overreaching

• Overreaching applies primarily to equitable interests arising from a trust.
• It detaches equitable interests from the land and allows the registered owner to transfer it as beneficial ownership.
• For overreaching to succeed, the conditions in section 2 LPA 1925 regarding payment of money or the transfer of land to two trustees or more must be met.

Overriding Interests

• Interests not recorded on the register but still legally binding on purchasers, especially those in actual occupation, are considered overriding interests.
• Defining actual occupation is important for these overriding interests to be legally enforceable.

Key Cases

• Williams & Glyn's Bank Ltd v Boland (1981): Established that a wife's actual occupation of a property grants her an overriding interest.
• Abbey National Building Society v Cann (1991): Established that actual occupation requires more than mere presence. Preparatory actions to move in are insufficient.
• Strand Securities v Caswell (1965): Emphasized the need for physical presence for actual occupation to be considered overriding.
• Link Lending v Bustard (2010): Confirmed that a persistent intention to return to a property, despite absence, can be considered actual occupation.