Definition
The right to enter upon lands. In its classical sense, a title of entry is the legal right or authority to go upon another's land — typically arising from a condition broken, a forfeiture, or some other event that restores or vests a right of possession in the claimant. It is distinct from actual possession; it is the entitlement to reclaim or assert possession, not the possession itself.
The term surfaces in two overlapping contexts:
1. As a possessory right: The right of a person (commonly a grantor or the grantor's heirs) to re-enter land following breach of a condition subsequent or the happening of a specified event. In this sense it is substantially synonymous with the right of entry or right of re-entry.
2. As a threshold for legal action: In early common law procedure, a claimant's title of entry determined whether certain real actions were available. Without a sufficient title of entry — one that was not barred by limitation or other legal defect — the action would fail regardless of the underlying merits of the claim to ownership.
Common Confusion
TITLE OF ENTRY is easily confused with two adjacent concepts:
- Title to land: Title to land is the full bundle of ownership rights; title of entry is merely the right to go upon or reclaim land. One may hold title to land without presently having a title of entry (e.g., if possession is lawfully in another), and historically one might have a title of entry without holding fee simple title.
- Right of entry (condition subsequent): The right of entry for condition broken is the most common modern descendant of the title of entry concept. The terms are functionally equivalent in many contexts, but "right of entry" is the preferred modern usage. "Title of entry" is archaic and appears primarily in historical sources and older conveyancing instruments.
Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter this term almost exclusively in historical sources — treatises, older conveyances, and cases predating the mid-nineteenth century. Several traps are worth flagging:
First, the term migrates across doctrinal categories. Depending on the source, "title of entry" may appear in discussions of real property conveyancing, limitations statutes, landlord-tenant law, or the law of conditions and future interests. A researcher who indexes only under one category may miss relevant material.
Second, limitation statutes transformed the concept. At common law, a stale title of entry — one not exercised within the limitation period — was extinguished, and with it any real action dependent on that right. When researching historical cases, note the applicable limitations period for the jurisdiction, because courts frequently dismissed on title-of-entry grounds where the right had expired.
Third, in the Law Mind corpus, this term connects to future interests doctrine. The "right of entry for condition broken" (the power of termination) is the successor concept in modern property law, and researchers interested in conditions subsequent, reverters, and possibilities of reverter should follow that thread forward into twentieth-century sources. The historical "title of entry" language drops away; the substance does not.
Fourth, Rapalje & Lawrence's cross-reference to "TITLE, § 7" and to California and New York authorities signals that the term had procedural as well as substantive dimensions in American practice. The Hill (N.Y.) reference likely concerns the construction of justices of the peace statutes — a reminder that "entry" as a term of art appeared in procedural and jurisdictional contexts as well as in conveyancing.
Historical Dictionary Support
Black's and Bouvier's agree precisely, both defining title of entry as "the right to enter upon lands" and both citing Cowell (John Cowell's Interpreter, the seventeenth-century legal glossary), indicating the definition was stable and drawn from a common source across these dictionaries rather than independently derived. Neither dictionary elaborates on the doctrinal mechanics — when such a right arises, when it is extinguished, or how it relates to the real actions — leaving the practitioner or researcher to find that substance in treatises such as Blackstone's Commentaries or Coke on Littleton.
Rapalje & Lawrence takes a different approach, redirecting to "TITLE, § 7" and appending case citations rather than offering an original definition. This cross-referential structure is characteristic of Rapalje & Lawrence's treatment of conveyancing terminology and is more useful as an index than as a standalone definition. Notably, all three historical dictionaries omit any treatment of how limitations statutes interacted with the title of entry — a significant gap given that statutes of limitations were the primary mechanism by which titles of entry were extinguished in practice.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Future Interests: Reversion, Possibility of Reverter, Right of Entry (property_5): The right of entry for condition broken is the direct modern successor concept and the primary doctrinal home for title-of-entry research in modern property law.
The Law Mind Real Estate Transactions & Construction Encyclopedia — Title Examination: Chain of Title, Abstracts, and the Title Search Process (realestate_11): Relevant when a title of entry issue surfaces in the chain of title or in a title search context, particularly in older abstracts containing historical conveyances.