§ 974. Title defined and illus- sion-Right of possession - Right trated. of property.

§ 975. Complete title - Posses

§ 976. Classification of titles.

§ 974. Title Defined and Illustrated. The discussion of three of the four leading departments, into which real property and the law relating to it are naturally divided, is comprised within the three preceding books. The last and fourth department, here commenced, explains the titles by which real property may be acquired and held. "Titulus," says Coke, "est justa possidendi id quod nostrum est." Blackstone defines title as "The means whereby the owner of lands hath the just possession of his property."1 More minutely, Austin says that title is the collection of "Facts or events on which by the dispositions of the law rights arise or come into being, and also the facts or events on which by the dispositions of the law they terminate, or are extinguished." 2 Since at common law real property is never lost or destroyed so as to become res nullius-it is sufficient, for practical purposes, to say that title means the ways or modes of acquiring rights and interests in property. A practical conception of it may be gained by contemplating the work of an examiner of title to real property. Doing his duty thoroughly, he starts at some unquestioned source of ownership, and then, step by step, finds and studies the transfers of the property, by deeds, wills, intestacies, and lawsuits, down to the possession and control of the present

2 Blackst. Com. p. * 195. 22 Austin, p. 902.

The expression "real property " is here employed in its narrow sense, as meaning objects of ownership. § 2 (1), supra.

"According to English law, rights over land are never lost or abandoned

so as to become res nullius. A mode of losing a right of this class is always a mode of acquisition by somebody else. For example, if lands cease to have an owner by reason of a failure of heirs, they at once escheat to the lord." Digby, Hist. Law R. P. (5th ed.) p. 402.

proprietor. In doing this, he is tracing the means of acquisition, the sources of the ownership, the title.

§ 975. Complete Title - Possession — Right of Possession Right of Property. — He who has a complete title to realty has acquired, from one or more sources, the possession, the right of possession, and the right of property. If he lack any of these, complete and unimpaired, his title is defective or does not exist. While the last of these elements of perfect proprietorship is sometimes said to have disappeared from our modern law, yet it is still to be found as a distinct entity in some jurisdictions; and clearness of conception of how ownership becomes complete, through various sources of acquisition, often depends on a careful scrutiny of all three of these elements. They may be seen, each standing out distinct, in the law of title by adverse possession in some of the most conservative common-law states, such as New Jersey where sixty years of adverse holding and occupancy are frequently necessary to a complete acquisition of realty by that method. If, in that state, A disseise B of his land, without any apparent right, and hold it adversely, A acquires at once possession, while B retains the right of possession and the right of property; for twenty years thereafter, if B can regain his possession, he may thus again perfect his title.2 After twenty years of such adverse holding, A owns both the possession and the right of possession, while B has nothing left in the land except the right of property; and B can not now perfect his title merely by regaining possession, but can do so only by judicial proceedings. After forty years more of such adverse holding,- making sixty in all — A may acquire the right of property also.3 Thus, B's title will have passed by three successive stages under the statute of limitations - A's getting possession by the disseisin; A's acquiring the right of possession by twenty years of adverse holding; and A's gaining the right of property, and so ultimately perfecting his title, by sixty years of such holding. In England, and in a large majority of the states of the

1 2 Blackst. Com. ch. xiii.

2 Gen. Stat. N. J. p. 1977, § 23. 3 Gen. Stat. N. J. p. 1972, §§ 1, 2; 1 Stim. Amer. Stat. L. § 1120; § 90, supra.

4 The common-law doctrine of " descent cast," now done away with by statute in most jurisdictions, also frequently made these three elements stand out separate and distinct. How

it might do this, by barring a disseisee of his right of possession, because of the death of the disseisor and his incipient right or interest being "cast" on his heir, and also its general nature and operation as a doctrine now quite unimportant, are explained at §§ 286, 868, supra. See, especially, 2 Blackst. Com. pp. 196, *197.

"The statute 3 & 4 Will. IV. ch.