Boundaries and the contents of them.

Land_Registry

Apologies for late arrival at the thread although it looks like you have already come a long way anyway what with replies on here and your solicitor's advice/action.

It reads as if the conveyancing carried out over the years may not have covered all the bases, at least with regards the shop and the sales by the original lady who owned the lot.

If the current occupier of the shop bought it when it was not compulsory to register then the burden of proof as to ownership rests with them. This would be through their own deeds and as your solicitor correctly advised you have to test that before you can do anything else.

The other point to consider is that if the 'lady' owned the lot then you only have one set of original deeds/documents for the lot so the key deed is the one by which each sale is then completed.

I mention this simply because you refer to how the land/property is described in the conveyance of the shop (or yellow highlighted land) and whether it is the description or the plan which matters.
If the description alone is being relied on then it should be clear as to what it is referring to so there is no ambiguity. But of the conveyancing was done correctly, the lady was doing all the selling after all at the time, then your own Conveyance should perhaps have mirrored that as well e.g. the house less the shop but in more words.

The devil will be in the detail of the evidence they have supplied. You need to rely on your solicitor as a result.

The final point to make at this stage is that over time of course they may have already acquired possession of the shop anyway but the details again matter.

If they have occupied it and meet the legal requirements of taking possession then any claim now might be successful. They have presumably never sought to register the claim as they believed they owned it anyway. You would only be notified of such a claim when applied for of course.

Your solicitor has presumably now gone back to them to state that the evidence doe snot prove title so the ball is back in their court

dan91

Hi thanks for your reply. Here is an album showing their conveyance (for privacy reasons i have blanked out Prices paid, names and addresses and signatures. However I have not removed anything else.
As you can see it does not reference the "Key" deed at all. In fact our original deed which we found a photocopy of which dates from 1895 references the whole plot of land which all three houses and the shop stand on and does not mention any of it splitting.
Our Land registry deed also has no mention of anything being split off the original deed.

I am confused how this conveyance can exist without referencing a previous deed as to move ownership onto this conveyance? If that's the case surely anyone could write a conveyance for anyone's house and have it signed?

Where the conveyance references the RED map attached for identification purposes, that is where they yellow building is coloured in red. Which is not even the bit of land we are arguing over.

Also surely this solicitor acting for them has a conflict of interest considering he did first registration of our property and is now having to argue for them that he was wrong.

Land_Registry

The conveyance relies on it's own plan so no separate identification issue exists - what I was referring to was where they define it as 146 Acacia Avenue as shown edged red on the plan to the Abstract dated 1923' for example and the 1923 deed plus this conveyance work in tandem.

Anyone can always draw up a conveyance but if it does not 'fit' with other records, deeds, documents then there will always be an issue.

As your title is now registered that is your starting point. As their's is unregistered their starting point is the deeds they have. Suggest you wait for their further clarification as if they don't have any deeds to prove ownership the ball is in their court.

Mallotum_X

Given you have done quite a bit of research and everything you have found so far is suggesting there was a solicitors screw up somewhere in the past surely the correct thing to do is drop the claim for the shop and get the deeds corrected to reflect what you know to have happened in the 80s.

When you bought your home at that point you knew someone else owned the shop, and nothing in this thread has shown anything to change that.

In your position i would be writing to the owners of the shop, not to demand they prove to you they own the shop but to get the deeds corrected to reflect that you don't own the shop.