Conveyancing And The Property Acts Of 1925
| Date | 01 January 1961 |
| Author | G. A. Grove |
| Published date | 01 January 1961 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1961.tb00657.x |
CONVEYANCING AND
THE
PROPERTY
ACTS
OF
1925
THE group of statutes dealing with the law of property which came
into force on January
1, 1926,
commonly referred to as the
Property Acts of
1925
though they include the unrepealed parts of
the Law of Property Act,
1922,
have now been in operation for
over a generation. The majority of present-day practitioners in
both branches of the profession have had no practical experience of
the law obtaining before they took effect. During that period only
comparatively minor amendments have been made to them, and
those principally by the Law of Property (Amendment) Act,
1926,
which mas made retrospective to the coming into force of the
principal Acts. Later amendments have for the most part been
the result of changes in various branches of the law and not by
reason of any shortcomings in these Acts themselves. Furthermore,
save for a few topics, the number of reported cases in which these
statutory provisions have had to be construed and applied has been
few. This is particularly
so
as regards conveyancing, with which
this article
is
concerned. There were
a
number of such cases in the
years following the coming into force of the Acts but since
1939
they have been few indeed. Actions concerning the existence,
construction and enforceability of contracts for the sale of land are
frequently before the courts, but ordinarily they raise no question
under the Property Acts, save perhaps that of compliance with
section
40
of the Law of Property Act,
1925.
It
would however be wrong to infer from the infrequ ,ncy today
there are no difficult and unresolved questions upon the conveyanc-
ing provisions of the Property Acts. Arguments do frequently
arise between the advisers of vendors and purchasers as to such
matters as whether the vendor has deduced a good title, whether
the purchaser is entitled to insist upon a particular objection
or
requisition and as to the parties to and form of the conveyance.
But there are several reasons why such disputes are rarely carried
as far as litigation. One is that today most contracts of sale of
land inccirporate one of the standard sets of general conditions, such
as
The
Law Society’s Conditions
of
Sale
or
The
National Conditions
of
Sale,
and these conditions normally confer upon the vendor a
wide power of rescission should the purchaser insist upon any
objection
or
requisition with which the vendor is unable
or
unwill-
ing to comply. While there are limits upon the vendor’s exercise
of such
a
power
it
does mean in many cases that
a
purchaser
anxious to get the property must accept such title as the vendor
123
in the Chancery.Division of vendor and purchaser sum
k
onses that
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