Wills, leases and assents are among those documents that do not form a good root of title.

In order to deduce title to unregistered land, you need to locate a good root of title that is at least 15 years old.

Bad roots of title include leases (when one is conveying the freehold), wills and equitable mortgages.

Sometimes, a conveyancer may be asked to accept a vesting assent as a root of title, but this is not very satisfactory.

Having located a good root of title, you then need to form a chain of title from the date of that document right up to the present time.

Seisin is a root of title, and it may be said without undue exaggeration that so far as land is concerned there is in England no law of ownership, but only a law of possession.

They have occupied much of the time of the higher courts but are on the margins of land law, which traditionally focuses on the market-place and the importance of documentation as the root of title.

For unregistered conveyancing, the provisions of the Law of Property Act 1969 provide that a good root of title is a conveyance on sale or legal mortgage which is at least 15 years old.

In certain transactions one might be requested to accept a root of title that is less than 15 years old or a document other than a mortgage, or a conveyance on sale as the root deed.

In the above circumstances, there would simply be a special condition attaching to the draft contract, which would recite the deed that was to be the root of title, and the matter would be left at that until after contracts were exchanged.

(f) If, perhaps years later, your client sells the property now being bought, you'll still find your notes on title helpful in deciding on the root of title, in preparing the draft contract, and in dealing with your buyer's requisitions on title.

A purchaser cannot insist that the root of title be more than 40 years old and the practice is to only insist on a minimal 20 year period because there is a presumption that the recitals in a conveyance for valuable consideration are true if that conveyance is at least 20 years old.

If the house was formerly in the sole name of the husband, it would be appropriate for the wife's solicitors to insist on a full abstract of title commencing with a good root of title, although it seems to be accepted in practice that the title was properly investigated at the time of the husband's purchase.