Why Do I Need Title Insurance? |
| Purchasing real
estate is probably the biggest investment you will ever make. With that in mind, you will
probably want to insure it not only to protect it from fire and theft but also from title
defects that may allow someone else to hold a claim to your property. It is possible for prior owners and other entities
to hold both legitimate and illegitimate claims against your property. Problems with the
title can limit your use of the property and could lead to a financial loss. The security
interest of your mortgage lender can be put at risk as well. Title insurance protects you
and your mortgage company from potential risks associated with defects in title.
What does this policy protect you
and your lender against?
Your title insurance protects your property
from the following possibilities:
- If a document in the chain of title is not
properly signed, sealed, acknowledged or delivered
- Fraud, incompetence, forgery, incapacity or
impersonation by someone in the chain of title
- A deed signed by someone who claimed to own
the property, but in fact did not.
- A deed signed by someone mentally
incompetent.
- A deed signed by someone whose power of
attorney had expired.
- Federal estate, State inheritance and/or
gift tax liens
- If someone else has an easement on the land
- Lack of legal right of access to and from
the land
- Errors in tax records
- Title taken as a result of an improperly
probated will.
- Misinterpretation of wills, deeds and other
documents
- Undisclosed heirs / the appearance of a
missing heirs
- Mechanics liens filed by a proven owner's
contractor
- Clerical Error made at the courthouse when
an earlier deed was recorded.
- Instrument signed by a minor.
- Improper legal description.
- Forged signatures.
- A married signer who represented himself as
single.
- Confusion of title resulting from similar
names.
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| Indenture, /indéntyer/ v. In real estate conveyancing, a deed to which two or more persons
are parties. In old conveyancing, if a deed was made by more than one, it was usual to
make as many copies of it as there were parties, and each was cut or indented (either in
acute angles, like the teeth of a saw, or in a wavy line) at the top or side, to tally or
correspond with the others, and the deed so made was called an "indenture".
Anciently, both parts were written on the same piece of parchment with some word or
letters written between them through which the parchment was cut, but afterwards, the word
or letters being omitted, indenting came into use, the idea of which was that the
genuineness of each part might be proved by its fitting into the angles or curves cut in
the other. |
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