Marketable Record Title Act Cuts Off Town’s Interest in Property

The law of real property is old, and it traces its roots to 1066 A.D. when William of Normandy defeated King Harold at the Battle of Hastings and claimed all of England as his own.  William proclaimed himself King, confiscated all of the land held by the Saxon Nobles and redistributed it among his principal Norman barons.  The resulting property ownership pattern became known as the “Feudal Ladder” and remained in place until 1290 A.D. when the Statute Quia Emptores was passed eventually resulting in the system of freely alienable private property in use today.  That system utilizes chains of title that can get rather lengthy as time passes.  Longer chains of title require more extensive examination and more complex surveys and appraisals in connection with each transfer of the subject property.  As a result, many states have adopted a version of the Uniform Marketable Title Act (UMTA).  The basic idea of such a law is to codify a tradition that originated in New England of conducting title searches back not to the original creation of title, but for a reasonable period only.  The basic idea is that when a landowner has held title to the property for a long enough period of time, claims against that title that are older than the statutorily prescribed time are extinguished.  The law has been held constitutional on the grounds that the legislature, which has the power to pass recording statutes originally, can amend or alter those statutes and require recording or the filing of a notice of a claim to give notice of existing interests, and can extinguish claims of those who fail to re-record.  The Iowa version of the UMTA, known as the Iowa Marketable Record Title Act (MRTA), was involved in this case.

In dispute was ownership of the eastern half of a roadway that extended for 110 feet from a lake toward another road that ended before it got to the lake.  The disputed strip was included in the roadway established by the County in 1874, but was never used as a road.  In 1964, the defendant received via warranty deed a one-half interest in the disputed strip.  He wasn’t assessed property taxes on the strip, however, until 1998, but he did use the property and maintained it when necessary.  In 2006, the plaintiff filed a petition to quiet title to the disputed strip in itself.  The defendant claimed that the plaintiff’s suit was barred by the MRTA.  The trial court disagreed, determining that title to the property was in the plaintiff – the defendant’s chain of title said he took title to his property subject to a plat which denoted that the disputed strip had been dedicated to the plaintiff.  

The Iowa MRTA is known as the “forty-year act.”  Under its provisions, any person who has an unbroken chain of title to any interest in land for forty years or more is deemed to have marketable title to the land.  That establishes the date of the “root of title” and any interest in the property pre-dating the root is extinguished.  But, there are statutory exceptions.  One of those is for interests and title defects that the inherent in the “muniments of title.”  That’s a legal term for a document that proves ownership of an asset.  Examples include, a death certificate of a joint tenant which establishes ownership in a surviving joint tenant, deed covenants and restrictions, title deeds, a will or a court judgment, just to name a few.  A muniment of title need not be recorded to be valid, but it must carry title to the property and be a vital link in the chain of title. 

Here, there was no question that the defendant had a forty-year unbroken chain of title to the disputed strip, but was the plaintiff’s interest in the strip inherent in the muniments of title when the defendant got his deed to the property in 1964?  The plaintiff’s interest was clearly created before the defendant took title, but was the plat part of the chain of title as of 1964?  The appellate court said it wasn’t because a plat is not a deed, will or other type of document through which title to land passes.  In other words, a plat is not a muniment and, as such, could not be inherent in the title that the defendant received in 1964.  In addition, the appellate court noted that the defendant’s deed did not specifically mention the transaction that created the plaintiff’s interest.  As a result, the MRTA operated to extinguish the plaintiff’s title, and the trial court’s decision was reversed.  A person searching the defendant’s chain of title for the past 40 years would not find the necessary documents that the plaintiff relied on to claim that it had an interest in the property.  That’s the whole point of the land recordation system – notice.  City of Lake View v. Houston, et al., No. 8-873/07-2026, 2008 Iowa App. LEXIS 1300 (Dec. 31, 2008).