Old Deeds?

[ansarac]

Here is my first post, and thanks for your time.

There was a thrift store, selling remnants from abandoned storage centers, we were told.

My relative found land deeds, alongside road maps, and assorted, old documents.

Do these deeds confer any sort of ownership or legal rights, whatsoever?

Or, is this useless, like finding receipts, around a dumpster.

I assume that they were purchased as a curiosity. Noone has tried to convince us, that they were valuable.

 

[latigo]

Here is my first post, and thanks for your time.

There was a thrift store, selling remnants from abandoned storage centers, we were told.

My relative found land deeds, alongside road maps, and assorted, old documents.

Do these deeds confer any sort of ownership or legal rights, whatsoever?

Or, is this useless, like finding receipts, around a dumpster.

I assume that they were purchased as a curiosity. Noone [sic] has tried to convince us, that they were valuable.

That ain't all!

Try or not to try, no one is going to establish that the relics have any intrinsic value. Especially, the "land deeds".

In the USA ownership of real property is exclusively evidenced by the records kept by an office of the county wherein the land is situated.*

Furthermore, in order for a deed of land to have legal consequences in passing title/ownership, there must be an overt act of the delivery of the instrument to the intended grantee. Either by the grantor or its lawfully designated agent. Or to one acting on behalf of the grantee. Rarely do they find their way to the designated grantee via a thrift store.

________________________


[*] But this doesn't necessarily hold true in "Hollywood". As a number of early La La Land screenplay scenarios have been written around a floating infamous deed.

Example, the Marx brothers in "Go West" (1939) and the elusive deed to "Dead Man's Gulch" on which Chico scribbles an IOU for ten cents to pay for a glass of beer that Harpo intercepted on its way to a paying customer because his throat was so dry he could strike a match off of his tongue.

 

[ansarac]

Rarely do they find their way to the designated grantee via a thrift store.

Do you mean to say rarely or never?

 

[tranquility]

Do you mean to say rarely or never?

The "grantee" is the person the deed is made out to. A deed must be delivered to the grantee (and accepted) to take effect. How many times do you think a deed made out to a person got into that person's hands by purchasing a lot at a thrift store over being handed it by the grantor?