Register of Deeds

“ MANOR AND COURT ROLLS. The oldest account of an estate is to be obtained, not from deeds of purchase and mortgage, but from its own private records, called court rolls, a most curious class of documents, puzzling to the antiquary because they contain local words obsolete and not recognisable through derivation. Manor rolls are a study in themselves, a subject hitherto overlooked. ”

“ It is not necessary, in arriving at this conclusion, to examine whether the words of the section shall be restricted to grants, or extended to mesne conveyances, or whether to deeds prior or subsequent. In no point of view will this section sustain the registration; for the deed is registered as a mesne conveyance, not a grant, properly so called, and must take effect under those legal provisions which extend to mesne conveyances. ”

“ An act of 20th December, 1836, after requiring all persons who claim lands, by deed, lien, or any other color of title, to record their instruments of title in the clerk's office of the county where the land lies within twelve months from the 1st April, makes it, by the thirty-fifth section, the duty of the clerk to record all deeds, conveyances, mortgages, and other liens, and all other instruments in writing, provided that one of the witnesses shall swear to the signature of the signer, or he, himself, shall acknowledge the same. ”

“ The words of perpetuity employed in it are those only which in substance are employed in all deeds and grants, and such as it is customary and proper to employ where titles are to be confirmed by statute, and where natural or artificial persons incapable of holding lands are authorized by law to do so. ”

“ Whoever has the absolute property in a bill, made payable to one or his order, may assign it as he pleases, within the provision of the statute, and such assignee may maintain an action in his own name ”

“ An appeal to the chief registrar in the case of the refusal of an assistant registrar to register a society or an amendment of rules, and in the case of suspension or cancelling of registry, is interposed before appeal is to be made to the High Court. ”

“ That every rector, vicar, curate, and every registrar, registering officer, and secretary, who shall have the keeping, for the time being, of any register book of births, deaths, or marriages, shall at all reasonable times allow searches to be made of any register book in his keeping, and shall give a copy, certified under his hand, of any entry or entries in the same, on payment of the fee hereinafter mentioned; that is to say, for every search extending over a period not more than one year, the sum of 1s., and 6d. ”

“ Registration laws are of statutory origin, and the statute must in each case be examined to determine what instruments are to be recorded, where they are to be recorded, and the effect of a failure to record. ”

“ All deeds which may be so registered should have an avowed preference over one that is not so registered, unless the holder of the latter can shew a clear, distinct and satisfactory cause why he has not been able to have his deed registered and the onus of establishing this ought decidedly to rest on him. ”

“ We will first examine the correctness of the general position, that an action at law cannot be maintained upon a decree in equity; and will, in the next place, inquire how far the jurisdiction of the court pronouncing this decree, and the efficiency of its proceedings with reference to the parties before it, may be inferred or rightfully taken notice of, from its style or character, or from proper judicial knowledge of the subject-matter of its cognizance, independently of a particular special averment. ”

“ To prove a title to property it is now only requisite to show a twenty years’ possession of it. Papers forming the title deeds to farms or small holdings are seldom of any great age. The custom of depositing estate records in the care of the family lawyer has tended to preserve a few deeds ”

“ I propose in a Codicil to be hereunto annexed to give a list of my debts, and to point out the resources from which they are to be paid, and I authorize my said Executors to settle all suits and claims which I may have against any person whatsoever, and to give receipts and acquittances thereupon, and to sell any land or real estate to which I may be entitled at the time of my death, and to give deeds therefor. ”

“ And, as we have seen, one of the orders of the court imports upon its face a knowledge of the contract made by its commissioner, and amounts to a ratification of such contract. The well-settled maxim that a court of record can act only through its orders made of record, when applied to judicial proceedings, means that where the court must itself act, and act directly, that action must always be evidenced by the record. ”

“ And be it Enacted, that no Devise by Will of any Lands or Tenements within the Kingdom of England, shall be allowed as good against any Purchasers or Mortgagees of the same Lands or Tenements, unless such Will, or so much thereof, whereby such Devise shall appear, shall be registred in one of the said Register-Books, within six Months next after the death of the Testator, provided that after such Registring of such Will or Devise, the same shall take the Effect from the Death of the Testator. ”

“ By the English law, as administered in the ecclesiastical courts, the administrator who is displaced, or the representatives of a deceased administrator or executor intestate, are required to account directly to the persons beneficially interested in the estate, distributees, next of kin, or creditors; and the accounting may be made or enforced in the probate court, which is the proper court to supervise the conduct of administrators and executors. ”

“ This section comprehends all the lands within the State, whether within or without the manors, to which any individuals had derived a title from the proprietaries, either in law or equity, by virtue of any deed, patent, warrant or survey, and confirms such title according to the estate, right or interest conveyed. That the section operates alike on lands within and without the manors, and that it confirms titles under warrants or surveys, for which the purchase money has been paid, are certain. ”

“ And be it further enacted, That if any person shall apply to any register of any land office to enter any land whatever, and the said register shall knowingly and falsely inform the person so applying that the same has already been entered, and refuse to permit the person so applying to enter the same, such register shall be liable therefor to the person so applying, for five dollars for each acre of land which the person so applying offered to enter, to be recovered by action of debt in any court of record having jurisdiction of the amount. ”

“ Registry under a particular name may be refused if in the opinion of the registrar the name is likely to deceive the members or the public as to the nature of the society or as to its identity. It is the duty of the chief registrar, among other things, to require from every society a return in proper form each year of its receipts and expenditure, funds and effects; and also once every five years a valuation of its assets and liabilities. ”

“ Service of regular process is a warning to all parties who have any interest in the cause to come in and protect their interest; and unless they do so, if due notice was given, they are bound by the decree. ”

“ State, justices of the peace, magistrates, clerks of all courts and prosecuting attorneys offices and their assistants, notary publics as well as the registrars of mortgages and deeds shall be permanent, and shall hold their positions as long as their respective posts exist. ”

“ Every executor or administrator shall render his account of his administration within the time allowed him for the settlement of the estate, and at such other time as he is required by the court, until the estate is wholly settled. ”

“ As long as personal property is held by executors as part of the estate of the testator, for the payment of debts or legacies, or as a residuum to be distributed, they hold it by virtue of their office and are accountable for it as executors ”

“ It is elementary that, where the ground of attachment may be alleged in the language of the statute, the authority to allow the writ need not be exercised by the judge of the court, but may be delegated by the legislature to an official, such as the clerk of the court. ”

“ Prayer of the bill of complaint is for discovery, and that the rights of the parties and the dates and validity of their several liens in respect of the lands may be ascertained, and that the lands may be sold and the proceeds applied so far as can of right be done, to the payment of the amount due upon the decrees and for general relief. ”

“ If a clerk may, after a deed, together with the acknowledgment or probate thereof have been committed to record, under colour of amendment, add any thing to the record of the acknowledgment, we can see no just reason why he may not also subtract from it. ”

“ In actions in which, in open court, at the term at which the final order of judgment shall be made, both parties shall declare their agreement that no record shall be made.
Where action has been dismissed without prejudice to future action, record may be made.Sect. 405. In cases where an action has been dismissed without prejudice to a future action, the clerk shall make a complete record of the proceedings, upon being paid for making the same by the party desiring the record to be made. ”

“ I. First then, a deed is a writing sealed and delivered by the parties [1] . It is sometimes called a charter, carta, from it's materials; but most usually, when applied to the transactions of private subjects, it is called a deed, in Latin factum, κατ' εξοχην, because it is the most solemn and authentic act that a man can possibly perform, with relation to the disposal of his property; and therefore a man shall always be estopped by his own deed, or not permitted to aver or prove any thing in contradiction to what he has once so solemnly and deliberately avowed [2] . ”

“ The genuineness of the signatures which appear on these copies of the grant; that they have come from a proper depository; that the parties who now hold them have claimed them since the date of their titles; that the lands are fitted for the objects for which they were sought, and have been used for that purpose; that surveys and possession defined their limits, contemporaneously, or nearly so, with the grants, are facts sufficiently established by the evidence submitted to the District Court. ”

“ That the register, or receiver, of any of the land offices of the United States shall be authorized, and it shall be the duty of said officers, to administer any oath or oaths, which now are or hereafter may be required by law, in connexion with the entry or purchase of any tract of land; and, if any person shall, knowingly and wilfully, swear falsely to any fact contained in any oath or affidavit so taken or made,Perjury. ”

“ Those in which the officer is directed to levy the process upon property of one of the parties to the litigation, sufficient to satisfy the demand against him, without describing any specific property to be thus taken. Of this class are the writ of attachment, or other mesne process, by which property is seized before judgment to answer to such judgment when rendered, and the final process of execution, elegit, or other writ, by which an ordinary judgment is carried into effect. ”

“ Under this act, as has been uniformly held by the supreme court of the state, there is no limitation as to the time when the deed shall be registered; the act simply provides that the deed shall not be valid against creditors or purchasers for value except from registration. ”

“ When the estate is fully administered the executor or administrator shall petition the probate court for an order fixing a time and place in which it will examine, settle, and allow the final account of the executor or administrator, and for the assignment of the residue of the estate to the persons entitled thereto by law. ”

“ Personal notice of a proceeding by which title to property is passed is not indispensable; it is competent to the State to authorize substituted service by publication or otherwise, as the commencement of a suit against non-residents, the judgment in which will authorize the sale of property in such State. ”

“ This formula, 'or his legal representatives,' embrace representatives of the original grantee in the land, by contract, such as assignees or grantees, as well as by operation of law, and leaves the question open to inquiry in a court of justice as to the party to whom the certificate, patent, or confirmation, should enure. ”

“ After reaching an agreement with Marie, she handed me several sets of papers, including homestead applications, homestead affidavits, final proof blanks for claimants and witnesses, affidavits of publication, non-mineral affidavits, blank deeds, and one or two other forms such as were required in making homestead entries. ”

“ That act expressly provides that the review here shall extend to the determination of the questions of law arising upon the record, and to such rulings of the court, excepted to at the time, as may be presented by a bill of exceptions, prepared as in actions at law. At law a bill of exceptions is only used to put into the record that which would not appear without. ”

“ What is due process in a procedure affecting property interests must be determined by taking into account the purposes of the procedure and its effect upon the rights asserted and all other circumstances which may render the proceeding appropriate to the nature of the case. ”

“ Is this such written evidence of a 'contract or sale of lands' as satisfies the exigency of that statute? The words of the statute are, 'unless the agreement upon which such action shall be brought, or some memorandum or note thereof, shall be in writing and signed by the party, to be charged therewith, or by some other person, by him thereunto lawfully authorized.'
A note or memorandum in writing of the agreement, therefore, is sufficient, and there is no question that in order to obtain a specific performance in equity, the note in writing must be sufficient to maintain an action at law. ”