News Release Archive
MUNICIPAL AFFAIRS--MARKETABLE TITLES BILL
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Legislation which will provide certainty to land
transactions and tax deeds, and make Nova Scotia a better
place to do business was introduced in the Legislature
yesterday by Municipal Affairs Minister Sandy Jolly. The
Marketable Titles Bill received second reading today.
"This legislation will help all Nova Scotians by increasing
the certainty of title to land," said the minister. "The
essential purpose of this bill is to bring certainty to the
law respecting marketable titles and tax deeds where
confusion and unpredictability exist now."
The bill addresses two issues that have reduced certainty of
title, delaying property transactions and compelling
property owners to engage in expensive court proceedings to
validate their titles.
The first issue is the appropriate number of years for a
title search. Courts have tended to increase the length of
the required title search. This bill fixes the title search
period at forty years, the period used in the other
provinces with this kind of legislation. A marketable title
must have a starting point in a registered document at least
forty years old.
"The bill does not eliminate any legal interest in land,
however old, except for some older unregistered interests,"
said the minister. "This kind of interest most often arises
when someone dies without a will but with heirs. The bill
provides a method of protecting these interests with a
registered notice."
The second issue that the bill addresses is tax deeds. For
many years Nova Scotians believed and relied on tax deeds as
a good source of title. The law has shifted so dramatically
that tax deeds have become very unreliable title documents
the minister said. The bill brings the law on tax deeds back
into balance.
It provides that after six years, a tax deed cannot be
challenged for any reason except fraud or if it includes
land that was assessed to someone else. This gives a person
a year to redeem a property after a tax sale and six years
more to challenge a tax sale for the reasons now allowed by
the courts. Any right to sue for damages for wrongful sale
is preserved. After six years, unless there was a double
assessment or fraud, a title that includes a tax deed would
not be open to challenge.
The bill does not apply to highways, easements and rights of
way for utilities or individual's rights of way that are in
use, or encumbrances acknowledged in a deed in the chain of
title.
"This proposed legislation has been developed with the
ongoing involvement of the Nova Scotia Barristers Society
which is very familiar with the hardship that lack of
certainty in this area of property law causes," the minister
said. "The society has been a valuable source of assistance.
We have also heard from many members of the public who have
experienced the kind of problems this bill is intended to
address."
This bill will help all property owners by increasing the
certainty of their title, primarily by eliminating technical
objections to title that represent potential rather than
real adverse claims.
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Contact: Chris McCulloch 902-424-7485
jlw Dec. 5, 1995