Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Missing Grant Deed From county clerks office

Missing records may result from a number of causes. I think the most common cause is the courthouse burning down. A fair number of counties have lost most or all of their property records at one time or another in history. Code of Civil Procedure sections 751.01 to 751.28 are the Destroyed Land Records Relief Law, and provide a means by special legal action to establish title against all claimants "whenever the public records in the office of the county recorder of any county are lost or destroyed in whole or in any material part by flood, fire, earthquake, enemy attack, or from any other cause...."

Other causes might be destruction of microfiche or microfilm during transfer of the images to magnetic (computer) media.

If, however, the recorder's personnel are unaware of any large-scale disappearance of records, the law cited probably wouldn't apply; in which case your recourse might be to a generic quiet-title action, and if it were contested by another claimant, you might have a hard time convincing the court that you had superior title, absent a key deed in the chain of title.

My guess is that either (a) the missing deed was mis-filed, perhaps because your father made a mistake in the property description - this is a common cause of unlocatable deeds (misfiling by the recorder because of errors in drafting the deed); or (b) whoever is doing the search for the deed is not doing a competent job of searching.

I would start out by looking at the title insurance policy associated with this property; it may have the recorder's information (number, book, etc. where the deed was recorded). Failing that, visit the office of the title insurer. They have voluminous records on properties they insure. Have them do a title search for you. They may be willing to do this for no charge.

I doubt very much that this deed was, or could have been, removed from the record. Much more likely, you are not looking in the right place, or it was never there in the first place.

If it is missing, you're going to have to go to court and convince a judge that corrective action is necessary and proper.