Five Tips Every Real Estate Practitioner Should Know About Defective Deeds

Real estate professionals often deal with mistakes in deeds, which can sometimes be fixed easily or might not even matter. The first thing to do is figure out if the mistake is harmless or if it will cause serious problems. If it’s harmless, it can be ignored for now, but it’s still best to fix it in the future. For example, a small spelling mistake or a wrong date might be harmless errors. A harmless error in a legal description might happen if the distance or angle is stated wrong, but the actual spot it’s referring to is clear. For example, if a description says “go north 89 degrees east” but it’s actually “north 87 degrees east,” that’s okay because it still leads to the right spot. The same goes for the distance – if it’s a little off but still leads to the right spot, it’s okay.

Also, if a deed or mortgage is missing a date or has the wrong date, it’s still valid. There are laws that can fix mistakes in deeds over time, like missing witnesses or the acknowledgment being defective. But these laws can’t fix everything – if there’s no acknowledgment at all or it’s totally void, they can’t help.

So basically, if there are small mistakes in legal documents, there are laws that can sometimes fix them. But big mistakes might not be fixable. If there’s a mistake in a deed for land, there are ways to fix it. One way is to wait seven years and have another deed that shows the person meant to sell the land. Another way is to have the original owner sign a new deed to fix the mistake. This is important because a mistake in a deed can mean the person who bought the land doesn’t really own it. A common mistake is trying to fix a mistake on a deed by using another deed. For example, if two people meant to share ownership of a property, but only one person’s name is on the deed, they can’t just make a new deed to fix it. They have to go through a different process to fix the mistake. Another mistake is when a deed describes more land than the person meant to sell. In that case, the person can’t just make a new deed to take the extra land back. They have to go through a different process to fix that mistake too. The most common mistake with defective deeds is believing that you can just fix the error and re-record the deed without getting the necessary signatures and witnesses again. In most cases, this won’t work because some important parts of the deed are missing. For example, in one case a person tried to fix a deed that described the wrong piece of land, but the court said their fix wasn’t enough. So, if you make a mistake on a deed, you can’t just change it and re-record it without following all the legal rules again. When fixing errors in the chain of title, you may not need to get corrective deeds from every person in the chain. Instead, you can get a deed from the person who first made the mistake. But you should also check if there are any legal issues with previous owners.

A deed doesn’t have to be recorded to be valid between the people involved, but it does need to be recorded to be valid against someone who buys the property without knowing about the deed. If a deed isn’t recorded, someone who buys the property later without knowing about the first deed could still have a valid claim to the property. So it’s important to make sure all deeds are recorded properly, with the right kind of notice to other buyers. Recording an instrument like a mortgage lets everyone know it exists. But for it to be effective, it has to be written in a way that shows it’s connected to the property. For example, if John Doe uses a different name when getting a loan (like William J. Doe), the mortgage should still connect back to John Doe. In a real-life situation, the lawyer should make sure everything matches up and get a statement saying the two names are the same person. Then, they can record the mortgage and issue a loan policy. John sells his property and gets more money than he should have because the new owner’s insurance company didn’t include a mortgage he had with another company. He keeps the extra money and later dies. The new owner is facing foreclosure because of the missed mortgage and is asking their insurance company to fix the mistake. It’s not clear who is responsible for the mistake. When a title company searched for John Doe’s title, they missed finding a mortgage because it was listed under a different name. The title company then tried to defend their mistake, but the person who bought the property didn’t know about the mortgage, so they might win in court. This shows how important it is to make sure all names on a property deed are correct and to include a spouse’s name if the property is their homestead. In real estate, it’s important to make sure that deeds are done right to avoid any problems with the title. If a deed doesn’t clearly show if the person was married or if the property was a homestead, it can cause problems. Sometimes, a corrective deed or an affidavit can fix the issue. Following these five tips can help prevent problems with title and insurance claims. In Florida, the word “person” includes a lot of different types of people and groups. Once you sell land with a clear deed, you can’t change it by making a new deed. If you don’t put the legal description on the deed, you can re-record it with the description and a special affidavit. This won’t affect the title unless someone else has already gotten rights to the land. There are a bunch of laws and court cases that explain how property deeds and titles work in Florida. And different spellings of names are usually considered the same if they sound similar. Also, the Florida Constitution has a section about property taxes.

Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/five-tips-every-real-estate-practitioner-should-know-about-defective-deeds/