Definition
Requisitions of title are formal written questions submitted by a purchaser's solicitor (or attorney) to the vendor's solicitor during a real estate transaction, directed at apparent gaps, defects, or ambiguities disclosed by the vendor's abstract of title. They are a procedural mechanism in conveyancing by which the buyer's side demands explanation, documentation, or cure for any insufficiency in the title as presented before the transaction proceeds to completion.
The process works in sequence: the vendor delivers an abstract of title summarizing the chain of ownership and encumbrances; the purchaser's solicitor examines it and raises written requisitions on any points requiring clarification or remedy; the vendor's solicitor replies; and unresolved requisitions may become grounds for refusing to complete or, in some contexts, for rescission.
Requisitions are distinct from the abstract itself. The abstract is the vendor's disclosure; requisitions are the purchaser's response to that disclosure. Together they constitute the pre-completion title examination dialogue in the English and Irish conveyancing tradition from which this practice originates.
Common Confusion
REQUISITIONS OF TITLE vs. OBJECTIONS TO TITLE: These terms are closely related and sometimes used interchangeably in older sources, but a technical distinction exists in practice. An objection to title typically signals a defect the purchaser regards as a potential ground for refusing completion — a challenge to the vendor's right to convey at all. A requisition is broader: it encompasses questions seeking clarification, requests for additional documentation, or demands that the vendor take a step to cure a defect, not necessarily a formal refusal to proceed. In many historical English conveyancing contracts, the two were treated in separate clauses with different time limits attached to each.
REQUISITIONS OF TITLE vs. TITLE CONDITIONS: In Scottish conveyancing, title conditions are real burdens and servitudes running with the land, a wholly different concept. Researchers encountering Scottish materials should not conflate the two.
Why It Matters in Research
This is primarily a term of English and Irish conveyancing practice, and its presence in American legal sources reflects the era before title insurance and Torrens-style registration substantially altered pre-closing procedure in the United States. Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century American real estate materials — particularly in jurisdictions with strong English practice influence — will encounter this term in contract forms, treatise discussions of vendor and purchaser obligations, and equity cases involving specific performance.
The critical research trap is anachronism. In modern American practice, the function served by requisitions has largely been absorbed into the title commitment and title insurance process, lender underwriting requirements, and the standardized closing checklist. The vocabulary of "requisitions" largely disappeared from American practice by the mid-twentieth century, but the underlying problem — what happens when an abstract reveals a defect — persists and generates case law under different labels (marketable title disputes, title commitment objections, curative affidavit practice).
For English and Irish legal history research, requisitions of title are central to understanding how vendor-purchaser disputes reached equity courts on specific performance claims. Whether a vendor had adequately answered requisitions, whether a purchaser had waived objections by failing to raise requisitions within the contract period, and whether a particular defect was answerable by requisition at all were live litigation questions throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Researchers should also note that standard form conveyancing contracts in England historically contained time-limit clauses for delivery of requisitions, and failure to serve requisitions within the stipulated period could bar the purchaser from later raising the same objections. This procedural feature generated substantial case law on waiver and election that may appear in equity digests under headings such as "Vendor and Purchaser" or "Specific Performance" rather than under any heading referencing requisitions directly.
Connection to the abstract of title is essential: requisitions only make sense in a system where the vendor assembles and delivers a narrative abstract. In Torrens registration jurisdictions, and in American jurisdictions where the title search is conducted by the purchaser's attorney independently rather than from a vendor-supplied abstract, the requisition mechanism as classically understood has no natural home.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines requisitions of title as "written inquiries made by the solicitor of an intending purchaser of land, to the vendor's solicitor, in respect of some apparent insufficiency in the abstract of title," citing Mozley & Whiteley. This is accurate as a compressed description and captures the essential mechanics. Bouvier's brevity here reflects the term's status in American legal lexicography — recognized and defined, but not a term requiring extended treatment because the practice it described was largely borrowed from English procedure rather than developed independently in American courts.
What Bouvier's does not convey is the procedural weight the mechanism carried in English equity practice, where the adequacy of responses to requisitions was a frequent issue in vendor-purchaser suits, or the contractual time-limit dimension that made the proper and timely service of requisitions a matter of strategic importance, not merely a polite exchange of correspondence. Historical treatises on vendor and purchaser — including those by Dart, Sugden, and in the American context Rawle on Covenants for Title — provide richer treatment of the doctrine surrounding requisitions than any single dictionary entry can supply.
Jurisdictional Note
Requisitions of title as a formal procedural step belong principally to English and Irish conveyancing tradition. In American jurisdictions, the underlying function exists but is accomplished through different mechanisms — title commitment objection letters, lender requirements, and closing condition negotiations — and the term itself is largely absent from modern American practice. Researchers working in Commonwealth jurisdictions (England, Ireland, Australia, Canada) will find the term in active use through much of the twentieth century and, in modified form, into contemporary practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Title Examination — Chain of Title, Abstracts, and the Title Search Process (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)
Real Estate Transactions — Title Search and Chain of Title (The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia)
Marketable Title Acts — Statutory Simplification of Title Chains (The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia)