Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Quiet Title and Title Company responsibility

I would need to know the details of the grant, the circumstances, and review the deed language. I believe yes you can sue to quiet title. If the issue is the 50%, you may have acquired the property by adverse possession. I did a quiet title action recently, representing the possessor, and brought an action against all persons claiming rights in the property, served summons by publication, and quieted title. If the issue is restrictions on use of the property, there may be ways to address that through a quiet title action also. If anything is improper about the language, as the laws related to how to make future persons bound by a purporter restriction are not simple, that may be sufficient. Otherwise, there are always public policy arguments such as against waste of resources. Email me.

Best,

Daniel Bakondi, Esq.

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Re: Quiet Title and Title Company responsibility

It is very common in California for mineral rights to be excluded (severed) from otherwise absolute fee title. If the property is not in an area known or suspected to have valuable minerals or hydrocarbons, the absence of these rights is of trivial importance.

Whether the absence of the mineral rights should be an exception is another matter, and I express no opinion on this. In a sense, declaring the mineral rights to be severed seems important to a proper description of the property, but also, arguably, the mineral rights are a separate estate just like the (for example) 50 acres that was sold off in 1924 and is no longer part of this parcel.

My hunch is that the lender is using the mineral rights issue as a red herring excuse to get out of a deal they no longer are eager to do for other, undisclosed reasons.