Opinion ID: 2513925
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Territorial Laws

Text: In 1863, the year Charles Beaubien executed the Beaubien Document, under Colorado Territorial law, a document conveying any interest in real estate had to meet several formal requirements, including the requirements that it incorporate an accurate description of the property and the names of the grantees: the christian and surnames of the ... grantees ... and ... an accurate description of the premises, or the interest in the premises intended to be conveyed, and shall be subscribed by the party or parties making the same, and be duly proved or acknowledged, before some officer authorized to take the proof or acknowledgment of deeds, or by his, her or their attorney in fact. Territorial Laws of Colo., 1st Sess., An Act Concerning Conveyances of Real Estate, 64, 64, § 2 (1861). The requirement that the document identify grantees by name is indicative of the territorial legislature's overt decision not to honor community grants that failed to mention specific grantees. The Beaubien Document flatly fails to meet that requirement. [2] The Beaubien Document does not give the christian and surnames of the grantees, instead only referring generally to the community members and inhabitants of specified villages. That omission is a legal deficiency that makes the document invalid as a conveyance under the operative law. Compliance with real property law is a matter of substantial importance. See IV American Law of Property § 18.27 (A. James Casner ed., 1952) [hereinafter Casner]. In the early years of our history, the questions of who owned what and who could sell what were legitimate and pervasive concerns. As a citizenry, we clearly believed in the sanctity of private property and the ownership rights associated with it. However, we struggled with how to clarify those rights as against those who would dispute them, and how to secure title to property such that it would become marketable to a subsequent purchaser. In fact, in Colorado's early history, one of the issues to which the territorial government fell heir was the question of how to adjudicate land claims and how to establish a common repository for preserving written claims to specific lands. See II Colorado and Its People: A Narrative and Topical History of the Centennial State 372-73 (Leroy R. Hafen ed., 1948). Under the common law, the grantor merely warranted that he was seised of, or possessed of, the title that he purported to convey. The obvious deficiencies of such a system led to the eventual enactment of recording acts and other statutory conveyancing requirements in every state. 2 Cathy Stricklin Krendl, Colorado Methods of Practice § 62.1 (4th ed.1998). The regulation of property transfer is strictly a matter of state law. Casner, supra, § 18.27. As the Supreme Court has noted, [a]s it is indisputable that the general welfare of society is involved in the security of the titles to real estate and in the public registry of such titles, it is obvious that the power to legislate as to such subjects inheres in the very nature of government. Am. Land Co. v. Zeiss, 219 U.S. 47, 60, 31 S.Ct. 200, 55 L.Ed. 82 (1911); see also BFP v. Resolution Trust Corp., 511 U.S. 531, 544, 114 S.Ct. 1757, 128 L.Ed.2d 556 (1994) (It is beyond question that an essential state interest is at issue here: We have said that `the general welfare of society is involved in the security of the titles to real estate' and the power to ensure that security `inheres in the very nature of [state] government.') (alteration in original). Private property ownership is nothing without a `bright line rule' to determine the validity of a title and of its potential encumbrances with predictability and without the need for litigation. Michael H. Rubin & E. Keith Carter, Notice of Seizure in Mortgage Foreclosures and Tax Sale Proceedings: The Ramifications of Mennonite, 48 La. L.Rev. 535, 592 (1988). Our legislature adopted a thorough statutory regime intended to ensure titles to real property are secure and marketable. See §§ 38-34-101 to XX-XX-XXX, 10 C.R.S. (2001). This court, over the decades, has consistently required conveyances to comply with such laws at the time of the document's creation to give full effect to the goal of security and marketability of real property titles. See, e.g., City of Lakewood v. Mavromatis, 817 P.2d 90, 96, 101 (Colo.1991) (concluding that, although a city filed and recorded a right-of-way in the road book, because the recordation did not comply with the specific provisions of the 1888 recording statute, the statute in effect at the time of the road petition, it did not give constructive notice to subsequent purchasers; therefore, because the road petition was a transfer of an interest in real property, it had to comply with all the specifications of the applicable recording act); Hallett v. Alexander, 50 Colo. 37, 46, 114 P. 490, 494 (1911) (The evident purpose of the recording statute is, to provide an effectual remedy against the loss accruing to subsequent purchasers of real estate arising from the existence of secret or concealed conveyances thereof unknown to the subsequent purchaser. The remedy is made effectual by requiring every deed to be recorded before it can be of any effect as against such purchasers.). That a purchaser would know what he is buying by examining the record title to a parcel of real property, and that an owner could be assured that such record title properly evidences every legitimate right that impinges on his fee simple ownership, are matters of no small import. City of Lakewood, 817 P.2d at 94 (noting that recording acts serve the important purpose of permitting a purchaser to rely on the condition of title as it appears of record and creating an accessible history of title). Therefore, very simply, the Beaubien Document, like every other real property transfer, must be held to the standards of the law in effect at the time it was executed in order to protect the certainty and marketability of property interests. The Document does not comport with those laws, and it, therefore, has no validity as to the landowners here. [3] The Document intended to create a grant to the members of a community: such a grant was in contravention of the applicable statutes and was, therefore, invalid.