Opinion ID: 1856048
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: background of mrta and section 704.01

Text: In landmark legislation fundamentally revamping Florida property law, the Florida Legislature adopted MRTA in 1963 for the purpose of simplifying and facilitating land title transactions. See § 712.10, Fla. Stat. (1995). MRTA was designed to simplify conveyances of real property, stabilize titles, and give certainty to land ownership. See City of Miami v. St. Joe Paper Co., 364 So.2d 439, 444 (Fla. 1978). MRTA is based on the Model Marketable Title Act, which was proposed in 1960 with multiple objectives: (1) to limit title searches to recently recorded instruments only; (2) to clear old defects of record; (3) to establish perimeters within which marketability can be determined; (4) to reduce the number of quiet title actions; and (5) to reduce the costs of abstracts and closings. See Lori Tofflemire Moorhouse, Note, Marketable Record Title Act and Recording Act: Is Harmonic Coexistence Possible?, 29 U.Fla.L.Rev. 916, 923-24 (1977). In its essence, the Model Act sought to accomplish these objectives by providing that when a person has a record title to land for a designated duration, claims and interests in the property that stem from transactions before that period are extinguished unless the claimant seasonably records a notice to preserve his interest. See id. at 924. In much the same manner as the Model Act, MRTA's provisions contain a scheme to accomplish the same objective of stabilizing property law by clearing old defects from land titles, limiting the period of record search, and clearly defining marketability by extinguishing old interests of record not specifically claimed or reserved. Section 712.02 of MRTA expressly provides that any person vested with any estate in land of record for thirty years or more shall have a marketable record title free and clear of all claims of an interest in land except those preserved by section 712.03: Any person having the legal capacity to own land in this state, who, alone or together with his predecessors in title, has been vested with any estate in land of record for 30 years or more, shall have a marketable record title to such estate in said land, which shall be free and clear of all claims except the matters set forth as exceptions to marketability in § 712.03. § 712.02, Fla. Stat. (1995) (emphasis added). In construing this provision in Marshall v. Hollywood, Inc., 236 So.2d 114 (Fla.1970), this Court stated: By the Marketable Record Title Act, any claim or interest, vested or contingent, present or future, is cut off unless the claimant preserves his claim by filing a notice within a 30-year period. If a notice is not filed, the claim is lost. Id. at 119 (quoting Catsman, The Marketable Record Title Act and Uniform Title Standards, § 6.2, in III Florida Real Property Practice (1965) (citation omitted)) (emphasis added). We must determine whether a claim to a common law way of necessity falls within the all claims language used in the statute and as interpreted expansively in Marshall.