Legislation Passed To Ease the Registered Land Withdrawal Process

On August 13, 2014, as part of Chapter 287 of the Acts of 2014, Governor Deval Patrick enacted legislation to expand landowners' rights to withdraw land from Land Court registration in Massachusetts.

Massachusetts has a dual system for tracking title to land, consisting of registered land (which is essentially a Torrens System of land registration) and unregistered land. Registered land documents are organized within each registry district of the Massachusetts Land Court in accordance with the identity of the property to which they relate, and each property has its own certificate of title upon which all documents encumbering the property are noted. Title to registered land is essentially "insured" by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts through the issuance of the certificate of title. This is unlike unregistered land, which is based upon grantor-grantee indices without regard to the property affected and does not have the backing of the Commonwealth.