Land Law - Overriding Interests Flashcards
Registered Land - First Registration
What are the qualifying estates?
What types of transfers of a qualifying estate trigger first registration?
Qualifying Estates
(1) Unregistered freehold estates
(2) Unregistered leasehold estates with more than seven years to run.
Triggering events
- Sale
- Gift
- First legal mortgage
- Assent
- Court order
Registered Land: The Register
What are the three registers and what do each of them contain?
Property Register
- description of the land
- reference to the title plan
- rights benefiting the land
Proprietorship Register
- Class of title
- Restrictions affecting the registered proprietor’s ability to deal with the estate.
Charges Register
- Notices of third party rights and leases
- Mortgages
Registered Land - Registrable Dispositions
Registrable dispositions must be themselves registered (i.e. they have their own official copies - title number etc).
What are the four Registrable Dispositions?
- Transfer of registered estate.
- Grant of legal lease of more than seven years.
- Grant of legal charge.
- Grant of express legal easement
Registered Land - Priority of mortgages
A mortgage becomes a legal mortgage only when entered on the charges register of the title affected.
Where there is more than one charge, how is the order for priority determined?
By the order in which they are entered on the register (not the order in which they are created)
Registered Land - Minor interests
Minor interests are not capable of substantive registration (i.e. they are not estates), they are not registrable dispositions, and they are not overriding interests.
Name six of these.
How are they protected?
Interest under a trust
Restrictive covenant
Estate contract.
Equitable lease
Equitable easement created after 2003,
Home right.
All protected by a notice in the charges register except for interests under trust which are protected by a restriction in proprietorship register.
Registered Land - Overriding interests
A buyer for valuable consideration of registered land takes the land free of all interests except for:
- Registered charges (legal mortgages)
- Minor interests other than interests under a trust.
- Overriding interests.
What are the overriding interests?
s.29 LRA 2002
Interests under trusts are not included as they can be overreached.
Overriding interests
- Legal leases granted for 7 years or less.
- Interests of actual occupation
- Legal easements created by implication or prescription.
REFRESHER: Leases
- Leases of 3 years or less do not require formalities (provided they meet the criteria for a parol lease)
- Leases of 7 years or less (excluding parol leases) require a deed to be valid.
- Leases of more than 7 years require a deed and registration.
Registered Land - Overriding Interests
Legal easements created by implication or prescription after October 2003 take effect as overriding interests if one of two conditions are satisfied under Schedule 3, para 3 of LRA 2002:
Refresher: Legal easements created by implication or prescription include:
- necessity
- common intention
- Wheeldon v Burrows
- s.62 LPA
- Prescription
- The buyer has actual or constructive knowledge; or
- The easement was exercised at least once in the year prior to transfer.
Registered Land - Overriding Interests
What do interests of persons in actual occupation create a safety net for?
What are the conditions for this overriding interest to be valid?
.. but only if the person with that interest is… or signs of such are …
Do interests in actual occupation apply to unprotected interests under trust?
Unprotected minor interests
- The person has an equitable interest.
- The person must be in actual occupation; or
- Signs of actual occuputation are obvious on a reasonably careful inspection.
Yes, but not if overreaching has taken place.
Registered Land - Overriding Interests
Which 4 types of minor interests can never create an interest of persons in actual occupation?
- Personal rights
- Home rights
- Easements
- Restrictive covenants
My understanding is that interests in actual occupation would usually relate to equitable leases and beneficial interests under trust (but the latter can be overreached).
It may relate to estate contracts, but they’d probably fail the actual occupation test.
Registered Land - Overriding Interests
What are 4 factors to determine whether somebody is in actual occupation?
- Degree of permanence and continuity;
- Intentions and wishes of that person;
- Nature of property
- Personal circumstances of that person.
Registered Land - Overriding Interests
Overriding status is lost if:
a. The person holding the interest failed to disclose it upon inquiry, when reasonably expected to do so;
b. the person’s occupation was not obvious upon reasonably careful inspection; and
c. the buyer did not have actual knowledge of it.
The chapter on unregistered land is not covered here but it seems straightforward.
The chapter on consolidation is not covered here. It is mostly repetition, other than the subchapter on easements.
