The 1925 legislation: key themes and concepts

Question 1

What were the four goals of the 1925 legislation?

Answer 1

(1) To simplify land conveyancing.
(2) To introduce transparency through title registration.
(3) To protect certain forms of disorganised or vulnerable interest; and
(4) To foster free alienability of land.

Question 2

How did s 1 LPA 1925 seek to simplify the law?

Answer 2

By abolishing the old doctrine of estates and stating that, from that point onwards, there could only exist two estates in land.

Question 3

What is the general rule with interests in land when it comes to registration?

Answer 3

If they can be registered but aren’t, they won’t bind a disponee for value (with exception of overriding interests): ss 28-29 LRA 2002.

Question 4

What do we mean by free alienability?

Answer 4

That a good system of land law will optimise the capacity of people to exchange land with one another.

Question 5

When does the concept of overreaching come into play?

Answer 5

When the land is co-owned. When I’m selling you the land you want it to be with the blessing of the co-owners.

Question 6

If A & B hold a legal estate together, what does that make them?

Answer 6

Trustees of the land.

Question 7

What happens when there is overreaching?

Answer 7

During the sale of land, the co-owners pass the legal title on to the disponee and, in exchange for the proceeds of sale, the disponee takes that title completely free of any rights the co-owners had in the land: their rights have been turned into a beneficial entitlement to the money paid for the land.

Question 8

When overreaching has occurred, what right do the co-owners have over the substitute asset?

Answer 8

A right in rem, not merely a personal right!

Question 9

What does s 2(1) LPA 1925 stipulate?

Answer 9

For overreaching to take effect, the purchase money provided by the disponee has to be paid to at least two trustees.

Question 10

What does s 34(2) Trustee Act 1925 stipulate?

Answer 10

That legal title can be held by up to four co-owners.

Question 11

What does s 51(2) LPA 1925 stipulate?

Answer 11

All conveyances of land or of any interest therein are void for the purpose of conveying or creating a legal estate unless made by deed.

Question 12

What does it mean to say someone has notice?

Answer 12

That a reasonable person (who acts with the care and perspicacity required by the law in the context in question) would have known or discovered that fact.

Question 13

What does notice mean

Answer 13

Actual knowledge.

Question 14

What are the three main kinds of formality that land law uses?

Answer 14

Writing; a deed; registration.

Question 15

What are three reasons as to why we use formality?

Answer 15

(1) Certainty
(2) Improve the quality of the intention
(3) The transaction is more visible to others not involved in its making.

Question 16

How can I give you a legal right in my land?

Answer 16

I must usually use a deed, and (in the case of registered land) in most such cases the conferral must also be registered with the Land Registry.

Question 17

How can I give you an equitable right in my land?

Answer 17

I must do so in writing, with no further requirement of registration.

Question 18

What is a registrable disposition?

Answer 18

A conferral which requires not only a deed but also registration. The conferral of the right must be registered in order to take effect at all.

Question 19

Name one registration disposition and one that is not a registrable disposition

Answer 19

The former: an easement, the latter: a restrictive covenant (in this scenario, if you don’t register it you won’t get to bind it against a third party unless it is an overriding interest).

Question 20

What is overreaching, broadly?

Answer 20

When trustees dispose of a piece of property, the beneficial rights detach themselves from it, so that the disponee cannot be affect by them. The rights then reattach themselves, as rights in rem, to the replacement property (usually money) that the trustees received, so that that becomes the trust property instead.

Question 21

What is a general rule between trustees and beneficial interest?

Answer 21

Trustees can have no beneficial interest in the trust property themselves.

Question 22

Why is it good that we have overreaching?

Answer 22

A power to dispose and overreach enables the trustees to trade between assets so as to maximise the return to the beneficiary.

Question 23

Complete the sentence: land owned by more than one person must…

Answer 23

…be held on trust.

Question 24

Why does the two trustee rule exist?

Answer 24

To protect the beneficiaries by lessening the chances of the purchase money being embezzled.

Question 25

What does s 2 LP(MP)A 1989 stipulate?

Answer 25

The requirements for a valid contract for the sale or other disposition of an interest in land.

It requires the contract to be in writing. No contract exists unless and until formality requirements are fulfilled.

The document itself must be signed.

Applies to all contracts for the creation or transfer of an interest in land. Applies equally to equitable interests.

Question 26

What do you need after the contract for the sale or other disposition of an interest in land is created?

Answer 26

This is executed by the creation or transfer of the interest conferred, and the formality requirements for the creation or transfer of the legal right are provided by ss 52 and 54 of the LPA 1925.

Question 27

What does s 54(2) LPA 1925 stipulate?

Answer 27

That you do not require a deed for short leases.

Question 28

Where are the requirements for a deed listed?

Answer 28

s 1 LP(MP)A 1925

Question 29

What is the curtain principle?

Answer 29

The register is the sole source of information for proposing purchasers, who need not and, indeed, must not concern themselves with trusts and equities that lie behind the curtain: this is achieved through the process of overreaching.

Question 30

What does s 2(1)(a) LRA 2002 stipulate?

Answer 30

Registration applies to the two legal estates in land.

Question 31

What would TOLATA 1996 have to say about the situation of the Flegg’?

Answer 31

The Flegg’s would no longer hold a beneficial interest under a trust for sale, but under a trust of land, and their beneficial interests would clearly be in land , in respect of which they would have a right of occupation.