The deed, the bill of sale for real estate, is drawn up ahead of time so that it can be examined and approved. A full warranty deed contains legal guarantees; that the seller really owns the property, for example, and that no one will ever challenge your right to it. In some areas, the standard is a bargain and sale deed with covenant, or special warranty deed, which contains some guarantees but not as many. If you buy from an estate, you receive an executor’s deed. A quitclaim deed completely transfers whatever ownership the grantor (person signing the deed) may have had, but makes no claim of ownership in the first place. In feudal times, when few could read or write, transfer of ownership took place with buyer and seller first walking the boundaries of the land in question together. Often they would take along young boys who would be there to serve as witnesses after buyer and seller were long gone. (One account says the boys were urged along with switches, on the theory that one doesn’t forget painful experiences—“beating the bounds.”) With the boundaries agreed upon, the seller would then dig up a clod of earth from the land being transferred and hand it to the buyer, who seized it and at that moment was the new owner, “seized of the land.” The legal term seisin still refers to the claim of ownership. Today, in a literate society, that clod of earth is replaced by a document, the deed, whose sole purpose is to transfer ownership. The beating of the bounds is replaced by the legal description in the deed. And you become owner at the exact moment when the deed is handed to you and accepted by you—physical transfer, just as it was with that clod of earth. |
