One of the biggest risks to the title of a property are what prior owners and/or occupiers of the property did or failed to do. Thus, the basic premise of title insurance is identifying the risks to title before they materialize into an attack and ensuring that those past events do not endanger an individual’s right to ownership.
Threats to good and marketable title include:
- A forged will or deed
- A signature by a minor or mentally incompetent person
- Adverse possession
- Clerical errors in the records
- Confusion arising from similarity of names
- Duress
- False affidavits
- Fraud
- Judgment against a property owner
- Lawsuits that relate to the property
- Misfiling of a document by the Registry of Records
- Sellers who misrepresent their marital status
- Undisclosed heirs
- Undiscovered wills
- Unreleased mortgages
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