2023 Massachusetts General Laws › Part II - Real and Personal Property and Domestic Relations › Title I - Title to Real Property › Chapter 184 - General Provisions Relative to Real Property › Section 19 - Entry for Breach of Condition; Certificate; Recordation

Section 19. If real property has been conveyed by deed on a condition therein expressed, which is not a mortgage and if proceedings based upon right of entry for breach of such conditions have not been barred by section thirty-one A of chapter two hundred and sixty, the grantor, his heirs and devisees upon breach of such condition may enter on the granted premises in order to revest the title; and a certificate of such entry, made and sworn to before any officer duly qualified to administer oaths by two competent witnesses and recorded within thirty days after such entry in the registry of deeds for the county or district where the land lies, or a duly certified copy of the record of such certificate, shall, after the expiration of three years from such entry, be prima facie evidence of such breach and entry. If a grantor, his heirs or devisees made such entry and certificate and filed the certificate as herein required prior to June ninth, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, said certificate or a duly certified copy of the record thereof shall have like force and effect.
No proceeding based upon any right of entry or forfeiture which arises by reason of the termination of an estate in land created prior to the second day of January, nineteen hundred and fifty-six, and regarded as an estate in fee simple under section one of chapter one hundred and eighty-six shall be maintained either at law or in equity in any court unless a person having such right or his attorney, agent, guardian, conservator or parent files on or before the first day of January, nineteen hundred and sixty-six in the registry of deeds, or in the case of registered land in the registry district of the land court for the district in which the land is situated, a statement in writing, duly sworn to, describing the land and the nature of the right and the deed or other instrument creating it, and where it may be found if recorded or registered, and in case of registered land naming the holder or holders of the outstanding certificate of title and stating the number of said certificate, and in case of land not registered naming the person or persons then appearing of record to own the fee subject to such right, or shown by the records of the tax assessors at the last prior assessment date to be the owner or owners thereof. Such statement shall be received and recorded or registered upon payment of the fee required by law, and shall be indexed in the grantor index under the person or persons so named, and in case of registered land, noted on the certificate of title. The register and assistant recorder shall also keep a separate list of such statements.
This section shall apply to all such rights whether or not the owner thereof is a corporation or a charity or a government or governmental subdivision, or is under any disability or out of the commonwealth, and it shall apply notwithstanding any recitals in deeds or other instruments heretofore or hereafter recorded.
This section shall not apply to any leasehold estate which has less than fifty years of its term unexpired, or to any leasehold estate mentioned in section one of said chapter one hundred and eighty-six, where rent due under a written instrument has been paid or tendered to the owner of the reversion within a period of twenty years prior to the first day of January, nineteen hundred and fifty-seven.