House Deeds Destroyed

bigbadbaz123

Hi,

I bought my current home in 1996, its a grade 2 listed building, part of which dates back to 1650. The solicitors that handled the purchase for my wife and I, held the deeds as the property was mortgaged. As I approach the end of the mortgage term, I have asked about getting them back but have told they don't hold them anymore and they have been destroyed, that land registry is proof of ownership.

I understand this is common now and normally I appreciate it wouldn't matter. However my deeds were over 350 years old, surely they were an important historic document!

I really wanted them and am really upset they would just destroy such an old document without a by your leave.

Anyone have any advice or even comment to make, that this would have happened at any solicitors?

Thank you,
Barry

Slithery

How long did you pay your solicitor to keep hold of them for?

silvercar

I would have thought the mortgage lender would hold onto them. In fact, at one point our previous lender wrote to us with some part of our "deeds" that they no longer wished to retain, for us to keep.

G_M

From a legal perspective the lender is right - it's the Land Registry that holds the ownership records.


But you are right that historic documents like this are of interest. However, if they've been destroyed then there's not much can be done to un-destroy them.....

Davesnave

bigbadbaz123 wrote: »

.

Anyone have any advice or even comment to make, that this would have happened at any solicitors?

It wouldn't necessarily have happened at any solicitors, but it happened with yours, and if you were not paying for the storage space in your agreement with them, then they would have a good case for unburdening themselves after 25 years.

As I recall, our solicitor lists 'free' deeds storage as one of their perks, but it's for a specified period and I don't remember what it is. I have the impression we said, "Oh, that's fine for our purposes."

Anyway it won't really be 'free;' we'll have paid for it in the fee.

davidmcn

Are you sure the destroyed papers even included historical deeds in the first place?

pramsay13

Ask your mortgage provider.

FreeBear

Davesnave wrote: »

It wouldn't necessarily have happened at any solicitors.

Indeed it wouldn't. I tracked down the documents to my house via a couple of firms that had been taken over or merged. Eventually found the documents sitting in an archive in Cambridge safe & sound (Thank you very much Eversheds). They had been sitting there for the best part of 20 years. The property had never been registered with the Land Registry, so destroying them would have increased the effort of doing a compulsory first registration.

AdrianC

FreeBear wrote: »

Indeed it wouldn't. I tracked down the documents to my house via a couple of firms that had been taken over or merged. Eventually found the documents sitting in an archive in Cambridge safe & sound (Thank you very much Eversheds). They had been sitting there for the best part of 20 years. The property had never been registered with the Land Registry, so destroying them would have increased the effort of doing a compulsory first registration.

And that last little detail is the major difference to the OP's situation.

Their property is registered, so the solicitor are right that the primary record of property ownership is unchanged by the destruction of the deeds. They are, technically, valueless. In your situation, they were still the primary record.

chrisw

I was looking forward to getting my deeds when I paid my mortgage off but they seem to have got lost somewhere along the way. I changed mortgage every couple of years and I think it's one of the mortgage companies rather than the solicitors who've lost them.

I tried tracking them down but was similarly fobbed off with well, you don't really need them these days. I never did find them and it still annoys me to this day.

ToadsFriend

That is really said if they have destroyed such old and interesting documents.

I recently sold my house and retrieved the original papers from my original solicitors and was very suprised to see such a massive hefty bunch of papers...original letters from 1932 (the year the house was built) the original deeds with a genuine wax seal and ribbon on them from the council..they were so cute!