If you hang around the real estate industry long enough, you are bound to come across the phrase “quiet title.” But unless you are a realtor or attorney, this may be a bit of an unknown to you. What does it mean to “quiet title,” and how does it work?
Definition
The quiet title action can be brought in Maryland to “establish title against adverse claims to the property.” It means that ownership of a piece of real property – your home or your condo or your buildable lot – is clearly given, by a court order, to you. Why, though, would such an action be necessary? After all, presumably you have your deed, you went to a settlement, and the documents are all recorded with Land Records.
“Adverse” claims to property can arise in any of several ways. First, the settlement or sale may have been done improperly, or just vaguely. The legal description of the property in the deed may be wrong. Second, the party from whom you acquired the property may not have had the authority to grant it – perhaps they were only one of several owners, or their title was defective in some way. Third, there may be intervening lienholders – a mortgage, a deed of trust, an HOA or condo lien, or a tax lien may all establish an adverse claim to a property. And finally, there may exist a claim for adverse possession: someone may have been occupying the property for long enough that they now have a valid legal claim to ownership.
The Process
A quiet title action is a fairly straightforward legal claim; as the putative owner, you want to establish the grounds for extinguishing any and all possible claims of ownership by any other person. In order to do so, you must file an action with the court, setting forth the grounds for your claim of ownership (usually your deed, unless you yourself are the adverse possessor). Next, you must serve or otherwise notify all possible claimants of ownership to the property. Courts will typically require a “publication,” meaning that you must put an advertisement in the legal announcements section of a newspaper. Once those two steps are accomplished, you must prove your case to the judge. This can be fairly simple if no other party objects or argues against you; perhaps it was a simple scrivener’s error that everyone agrees was a mistake. On the other hand, if an adverse party is making a claim to the property, then discovery and a trial will take place, meaning that you will need to know the rules of evidence and present the best possible case to support your claim of ownership.
Courts require the service and publication, along with proof of the claim, in part because the quiet title action, once completed, is very difficult to overturn. The decision deprives someone of a possible claim to the land, which courts only want to do upon a sufficient evidentiary showing. So the rules make it difficult to do and harder to undo to protect the rights of everyone involved.
The Takeaway
A quiet title action is one that “silences” all other possible claims of ownership to a piece of real property, and vests ownership, or “title,” in one party. It is a rigid process, an often misunderstood concept, and a very nuanced area of the law. But when done correctly, it can be an extremely important tool for a property owner.