BUYING TITLES

Definition

Buying titles refers to the purchase of a claimant's rights or interest in real property when that claimant is not currently in possession of the land — that is, where a third party is in adverse possession or has otherwise displaced the rightful owner (a disseisee). At common law, and broadly adopted in early American law, such a purchase was void. The law refused to allow a person to acquire a mere right to litigate — a "pretended title" or a "quarrel" — as a speculative commodity. The vendor is selling not possession, but the prospect of recovering possession through legal action, and the common law viewed this transfer as champerty-adjacent and socially destabilizing to land tenure. The prohibition operated as follows: if the true owner of land had been disseised (wrongfully put out of possession), that owner could not validly convey title to a third-party purchaser while out of possession. The conveyance was treated as void, not merely voidable. In some American jurisdictions, the vendor could additionally face criminal penalties for making such a sale. ---

Common Confusion

Buying titles should not be confused with purchasing a defective or clouded title in the ordinary commercial sense — where the seller is in possession but title is encumbered by liens, competing claims, or documentation gaps. In clouded-title transactions, the conveyance itself is valid; the buyer takes with notice of the encumbrance. With buying titles in the historical sense, the problem is not the quality of the title but the legal incapacity to convey at all while out of possession. The distinction matters when tracing the lineage of a chain of title: a deed made by a disseisee was void ab initio, creating a break in the chain that no subsequent recording could cure. ---

Why It Matters in Research

Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century real property records and title disputes will encounter this doctrine frequently, particularly in early American case law and chancery records where land titles were contested following Revolutionary War-era dispossessions, adverse possession claims, and frontier settlement disputes. Several research traps apply: First, the prohibition against buying titles was statutory in England (the Statute of Forcible Entry, 1381, and later the Champerty statutes) and was received into American common law with significant jurisdictional variation. Some states codified the prohibition; others allowed the conveyance but stripped the purchaser of certain remedies. Researchers cannot assume uniform treatment and should check whether the relevant jurisdiction had a specific statute abrogating or modifying the common law rule. Second, the criminal dimension noted by Rapalje & Lawrence is significant for legal history researchers. In some American states, the sale of a pretended title was a misdemeanor, meaning the underlying transaction could appear in criminal court records as well as civil title litigation. A researcher tracing a disputed chain of title may need to cross-reference criminal dockets. Third, the doctrine has been largely abolished or heavily modified in modern American law. Statutes in most states now permit the transfer of a right of action in real property, and recording acts have shifted the analytical framework away from possession-based validity toward notice-based priority. A term that was central to nineteenth-century title litigation appears rarely in modern practice. This means that historical dictionary entries and treatise sources will reflect a doctrine more robust than current law, while modern sources may omit it almost entirely. Fourth, this doctrine connects directly to the champerty and maintenance cluster of concepts. When researching buying titles, researchers should anticipate that cases discussing it will also invoke champerty doctrines and that the two lines of authority sometimes merge in older opinions. ---

Historical Dictionary Support

All three source dictionaries agree on the core definition: buying titles means purchasing the rights of a person out of possession to land held by another. Bouvier offers the most doctrinal development, explaining the "buy a quarrel" rationale and linking the void-conveyance rule to the common law's hostility toward the commodification of litigation rights. Rapalje & Lawrence adds the important American dimension — that criminal punishment of the vendor existed in some states — and cites English and American authority, though the citation string in the surviving text is fragmentary. Black's entry, characteristically compressed, captures the definition without the policy explanation that Bouvier provides. For research purposes, Bouvier is the more useful starting point because it situates the doctrine within the broader champerty/maintenance framework. None of the three sources adequately addresses the statutory modifications made in American jurisdictions through the nineteenth century, nor do they grapple with how recording act regimes affected the doctrine. Researchers should not rely on these entries as a complete statement of the law in any given American state after roughly 1850. ---

Jurisdictional Note

The common law prohibition was received throughout American jurisdictions but modified unevenly by statute. Several states enacted specific legislation permitting the conveyance of rights by a disseisee while preserving other remedies; others maintained the void-conveyance rule well into the twentieth century. The criminal penalty for selling a pretended title was a feature of some but not all American states. Researchers should treat the common law rule as a baseline and verify the specific statutory history of the jurisdiction at issue. ---

Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia: Title Examination — Chain of Title, Abstracts, and the Title Search Process (realestate_11). The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia: Real Estate Transactions — Title Search and Chain of Title (property_41). ---

Related Terms