The supremacy of title deed (2)

You never can tell how close to you these ubiquitous and all-powerful land-grabbers are to you…when they come knocking on your door, you knock them off with a superior Title Deed!”-Property Logic

When we started this series last week, little did we know how much a lot of property owners have been trapped in this Title Deed debacle. The large number of calls we got is a clear testimony to the fact that this issue of Title Deed requires very urgent national discourse. There is the need to critically evaluate some procedures put in place by states towards the procurement of Title Deeds. Most of the calls we got were from property owners whose various effort to regularize their Title Deed formerly have either been discouraged or got frustrated by some of the very cumbersome processes put in place by states of the federation. Am sure we will examine some of these processes in our subsequent editions. For today, we will examine some important documents that are critical to Title Deeds to landed property as we promised in our last edition.

Family reciept: The build up to an effective Title Deed is the land purchase Receipt. This is taking into consideration that the owner of the property stated from the land purchase. It is a major requirement to have an original receipt for such land purchase. Receipts are evidencences for monies paid for such lands. Such receipts should be obtained from the original owners or anyone one with the Power of Attorney to so act for the land owners. A buyer should ensure an appropriate receipt is issued to him. All effort should be made to avoid just a written piece of paper in the place of a proper receipt. From experience, we have found that sellers with ignoble intention will usually want to avoid proper receipts for land transactions as they use such as alibi to evade responsibilities for such transactions when the chips are down. Where these lands are bought from Traditional land owners, such receipts should be the original family receipts. Anything different from this is suspicious transaction and mischievous.

Purchase/sales aggreement: A sales or purchase agreement should be executed. In most land or property sales or purchases, this is conspicuously left out in favor of Deed of Conveyances. We do not advise such conduct. A sales agreement does not compromise the execution of a deed of conveyance, instead, it re-enforces this all important document. A sales or purchase agreement has the capacity to contain some extraenoius information that may not be contained in a deed- of-conveyance which is a more stream-lined legal document. The sales agreement can even contain photographs, photocopies of cheques of payment, copies of the land lay-outs and copies of drawings of the survey plans. These aptly describe the pieces of lands better than the deed-of-conveyance would.

In 2013, I was involved in land dispute litigation in one of the state’s high court. The Claimants had actually sold a large expanse of land measuring up to 157 Acres to a client of mine that needed same for the purpose of developing a hosing estate to resell to the public. Soon after he has done with the land-preparations, the same family was enticed with the outcome of the land preparation. They clandestinely moved into the land from an obscure part of it and yanked-off over 50 Acres from the same land. By the time my client discovered, structures were already standing in the various plots that they had sold to unsuspecting buyers. When all effort to make them back-off failed, we took a further step towards external intervention. An s soon as the family got an invitation from an arbitration body; they ran to the high court of the state to float a trespass case. We now needed to rely on the documents that were exchanged at purchase to counter their trespass claim, they contested every document placed before them and declared that they were all forgeries. In fact, what suffered the most rebuttals from them was the Deed-of-Conveyance as they claimed that the conveyance was a contraption and a figment of our imagination, they sustained this claim till we presented the signed agreement that contained real life photographs, and even recorded video clips of the money-payment ceremony, photocopies of the layouts. Photocopies of the original mass-survey and other infallible proof of transaction all carefully packaged into the sales agreement. This was the ice-breaker as their wall of defense crumbled finally on the weight of the infallibility of the agreement. This gave us incontestable victory in this contentious suit. This is the weight of sales agreement in land acquisition and Title Deed acquisition.

Deed-of-conveyance: A deed-of-conveyance is unarguably a very important feature in property claims.  This is purely a legal document that actually shows the passage of a property from the seller to the buyer. This document contains very vital information such as the seller’s names and other particulars, buyer’s names and other particulars, their addresses, the item being transacted, the description of such, the possible value at transaction, its location, and all other information that are germaine to the very transaction. It is the oracle of landed property sales so to say! I must say that this document is always thoroughly scritized should a land transaction end up in dispute; it is therefore always advisable that all necessary care is taken to prepare this. A Deed-of-conveyance, in most cases originates from the buyer of the property to be executes by both parties and their witnesses. Verifiable witnesses should be involved in executing this all-important document. Shortcuts should be avoided no matter how inconveniencing this may be.

I witnessed a signing of a Deed where the buyer of the property decided to sigh his witness column since his wife who was to do that was trapped in the traffic. The sellers were there with all their witnesses, but the buyer, to whom this document should be a matter of life of death, opted to help the situation since he didn’t foresee trouble breaking out moving forward. I had to caution him and latter educated him very elaborately on the inherent danger in taking such short  cuts. Witnesses are key in matters of land transactions. It is even strongly advisable that such witnesses are people of very strong moral value and impeccable character. People should avoid using their spouses of sibling or even children as witnesses when sealing landed property deals. This practice could be counter-productive as they could be described as manufactured witnesses in the event of litigations. Deed-of-conveyances should be sealed and Notarified by Notary publics for further legal impetus.

People should avoid using their spouses of sibling or even children as witnesses when sealing landed property deals. This practice could be counter-productive as they could be described as manufactured witnesses in the event of litigations.

SURVEY PLAN: The survey plan is very important. It should be one of the first documents to be sighted when commencing the process of a land transaction. Such survey should have been drawn by a registered surveyor and the survey plan itself should be registered. Unfortunately, over 70 percent of Surveys peddled by land vendors or traditional land sellers are either drawn by quacks or not registered. An unregistered survey plan is akin to carrying a gun without bullets in a hunting game. If you desire to buy a land without a survey plan, ensure this is promptly done by the family before you make any serious financial commitment. This saves you a lot of headache. If you must wave this or resolve to do it yourself, factor it into your negotiatiation, a Certificate of Occupancy may be impossible without a registered survey plan. This document shows all possible demographic characters that are present in the land and all other ownership details that will be of immeasurable use at the level of acquiring the Certificate-of-Occupancy. Once you are shown an existing survey plan, quickly give it to your lawyer for a check with the relevant authorities for authentifications before you take further steps. You could just be saving yourself some heartache  that could arise from unhealthy land transaction moving forward! We continue in our next edition.

Akhigbe Dominic