By HONEST ALF – the Little Guy Lawyer
This is part 4 of a 4 part series – please see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 before reading this part
Now you know where the term “real estate” came from – from those clever Romans who spoke Latin. But do you know what it includes?
For this, we move a little further along in history in England – that’s where our “land law” comes from. In the year 1066, William the Conqueror and his French Knights from Normandy beat up on the Saxons, and William took a look at all of England and said: “I like it, I will own it!” (or words to that effect) and so he did. He, as King, owned the whole country but he knew he could not farm it by himself – besides he had several hundred knights who had helped him and who wanted some reward - so he gave rights, involving huge tracts of land, to his knights; a knight might have rights over a whole county but ownership remained in the King. The knights then gave rights to their helpers and so on down the line until you got to the peasant – the lowly serf – who actually worked the land. It was like a giant pyramid with one King at the top and thousands of peasants at the bottom – but the King technically owned everything. It was called “feudalism” and it lasted for centuries.
The theory of ownership by the Crown continues today in Ontario; for example, if someone dies with no Will and no living next of kin, his or her property reverts to the Crown – it’s called “escheat” – so that’s a good reason to have a valid Will so you avoid giving stuff back to Her Majesty.
And the concept of owning only “rights” in the land continues today. The “title “ to every piece of land in Ontario must start with a Crown Grant – often called “Letters Patent” – but, for example, it might not give you the rights to the minerals in the ground under your feet. I’ll bet you didn’t know that, did you?
Nowadays, “owning” land gives you a pretty large bundle of rights – you can lease it out, you can sell it, you can leave it to your heirs – but what does it include?