Deduction of Unregistered Title

Abstract

In the case of an unregistered title, a seller deduces his title by providing evidence of what his title deeds say. At one time, he would have sent the purchaser an abstract of the deeds. This amounted to a précis of their contents, prepared in a stylised form. Nowadays, the simplest method of letting a purchaser know the contents of deeds is by sending him photocopies of them. The photocopy deeds must be accompanied by an epitome i.e. a chronological index of the accompanying deeds. The epitome should state whether each original deed will itself be available on completion, and whether it will be handed over then to the purchaser. In this book, ‘abstract’ is used to mean both the traditional abstract and the epitome.