Introduction

Question 1

What does overreaching enable?

Answer 1

Interests to be detached from the land and attached instead to the money obtained by selling it.

Question 2

What is one of the key policy objectives of land law?

Answer 2

To keep the land itself as easily tradable as possible.

Question 3

How do we associate the ownership of land with time?

Answer 3

Slices of time are a dominant feature of land law. The largest interest in land - the greatest of land - is ‘for ever’. When I say ‘I own my house’, what I actually have in my house is ‘for ever’.

Question 4

What is a fee simple?

Answer 4

The huge slice of time measured by the life of the land itself - the freehold.

Question 5

How can you realise in money some of the value of the land without giving up one’s whole interest?

Answer 5

Could keep the ‘for ever’ slice of time and deal in a shorter slice of time - the lease is a proprietary interest that best facilitates this.

You’re not giving up your estate in land. Rather, you retain the freehold in reversion.

Question 6

How else can we describe a slice of time?

Answer 6

An estate

Question 7

What would be the negative consequences of recognising multiple estates in the same piece of land?

Answer 7

No one would ever have a marketable slice of time. The value of the land would be locked up and sterilised.

Question 8

Since 1925 how many estates in land are recognised and what are they?

Answer 8

After the 1925 legislation only two estates in land have been recognised: the fee simple and the lease.

Question 9

What do property rights bind?

Answer 9

The land itself. Hence they have the potential to sterilise the wealth which inheres in that land.

Question 10

What do we mean by the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘realty’ in land law?

Answer 10

‘Real’ always indicates that something has some quality of or relation to a thing.

Question 11

What is one distinction we find between real property and personal property in remedies?

Answer 11

The remedial option with personal property here gives the plaintiff no right actually to get the property back.

Question 12

How is personal property different to real property?

Answer 12

It gives the victorious plaintiffs no right in or to any particular thing but merely a right that a person, the defeated defendant, pay the sum in question.

Question 13

What is another way of calling a lease?

Answer 13

A term of years.

Question 14

Is a leasehold a real right in land?

Answer 14

Yes. Your slice of time is a proprietary interest, an interest in rem, exigible against the land itself and hence against successors in title.

Question 15

What are ‘real’ and ‘personal’ anglicised from in Latin?

Answer 15

‘In rem’ and ‘in personam’. The Latin tells us that a right in rem is a right in or against a thing, a right in personam is a right in or against a person.

Question 16

What is another way of thinking about a right in personam?

Answer 16

An obligation.

Question 17

What is another way of thinking about a right in rem?

Answer 17

A property right or proprietary right.

Question 18

What are the consequences of having a right in personam in the situation of a new owner?

Answer 18

A new owner could tell the possessor of the right that his contractual obligations were nothing to do with anyone but the person you hold the contract with.

Question 19

What two forms can proprietary rights take?

Answer 19

Legal or equitable.

If the interest was registrable but you haven’t registered it, then it exists as an equitable right in rem.

Question 20

What reasons are there to support an adherence to formality when it comes to property rights?

Answer 20

(1) Requires the person to think carefully about what they are doing.
(2) Removes a significant element of doubt as to any entitlements.
(3) Real rights should be made apparent to through the documents, via registration, to ensure the purchaser is not invisible to these rights.

Question 21

Can some rights override the register?

Answer 21

Yes. One category of an overriding interest is of a person in actual occupation: LPA 1925, s 70(1)(g).

Question 22

What is one consequence of transferring to another person a slice of time in the land?

Answer 22

That two sets of rights in the same land exist alongside each other.

Question 23

What is the distinction between having an interest in the land and an interest in land?

Answer 23

When you are the title holder you have an estate in the land. When you own an estate you own a period of time in the land.

An interest in land is more like an agreement which creates legal rights and obligations but don’t create legal estates (e.g. rights of occupation and rights of way).

Interests determine the extent to which a person may use and enjoy the land of another, falling short of exclusive possession.

Question 24

What is the nemo dat principle?

Answer 24

You can’t grant a bigger estate in the land that you own. But you can grant a smaller one.

Question 25

What was the doctrine of estates?

Answer 25

The system of setting up successive titles, often involving a chains of titles. The point of the doctrine was to keep land within families.

Question 26

What does s 1 LPA 1925 stipulate?

Answer 26

There can only exist two types of estate in land: the freehold and the leasehold.

Question 27

What does s 52 LPA 1925 stipulate?

Answer 27

If you transfer a freehold or leasehold estate to someone else, and if it is to be legally recognised, you must normally do it by deed.

Question 28

What other requirement is normally attached to make a transfer of land legally recognisable beyond formality?

Answer 28

They also have to be registered on the Land Register.

Question 29

What are two exceptions to the need for legal estates to be registered?

Answer 29

(1) Leases for less than 7 years.

(2) Leases for less than 3 years need neither be registered nor created by deed.

Question 30

If you create a freehold or leasehold estate by deed and registration, you’ve created a legal right in rem. How can interests become legal rights in rem?

Answer 30

(1) Some can’t; can only exist in personam (e.g. contractual licences).
(2) Some will be only if your interest is entered on the Land Register.
(3) Some interests are legal rights in rem automatically (e.g. overriding interests).

Question 31

What is the consequence of registration?

Answer 31

That the interest ins then a legal right in rem: bind the entire world.

Question 32

Whose bound by an equitable right in rem (i.e. an interest that can be registered but isn’t?)

Answer 32

LRA 2002 s 29: If you have a registrable equitable interest in rem and you don’t register it, then it won’t bind a disponee for value. The question of whether the disponee had notice of that person’s interest is irrelevant.

Unless the disponee hasn’t provided value in acquiring the land, then the unregistered interest is likely to bind her: LRA s 28.

Question 33

What is the basic rule of registration?

Answer 33

If it’s an interest recorded on the Register, you’re bound by it.

Question 34

Can a right in personam be registered on the Land Register?

Answer 34

No.

Question 35

Who is a disponee?

Answer 35

Someone who becomes owner of the land in the place of the seller.

Question 36

What is the ‘numerous clasus’ principle?

Answer 36

The closed number principle: rights in rem are limited to a finite subset of rights. Hence, the class of rights remains small.

Question 37

List the rights of rem that are members of the numerous clausus? (Hint: there are 7)

Answer 37

(1) Ownership (freehold); (2) Leases; (3) Mortgages; (4) Easements; (5) Restrictive covenants; (6) Rights under trusts; (7) Licences coupled with an interest

Question 38

What does LPA 1925 s 205(1)(ix) stipulate?

Answer 38

‘Land’ includes any land of any tenure, and mines and minerals, whether or not held apart from the surface, buildings or parts of buildings…

Question 39

Where are the requirements for a valid deed laid down?

Answer 39

In s 1 Law of Property (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1989 - the document must be: clear on its face that it is a deed; signed by the grantor; witnessed; and delivered.

Question 40

What is the consequence of an interest which has legal capacity not satisfying the legal formalities?

Answer 40

It cannot have legal status. However, equity may recognised this failed attempt to grant a legal interest as a contract to create that interest. To do this there must be:

(1) A valid contract i.e. one compliant with s 2 LP(MP) A 1989.
(2) The contract must be one that is capable of specific performance.
(3) By applying the maxim that equity views as done that which ought to be done, an equitable interest arises.

Question 41

What if an estate or interest is not listed under s 1(1) or s 1(2) of the LPA 1925?

Answer 41

It can never have legal status and could only ever be equitable: s 1(3) LPA 1925. These include restrictive covenants and beneficial interests behind a trust. To achieve equitable status they would need to satisfy certain formalities which differ depending upon the particular interest.