2. I don't even understand how a title transfer could happen without verifying ownership. Is the title system in the USA decentralized or that much different than elsewhere? i.e. Torrens-style
The claim that the title insurance industry is the reason for lack of adoption of Torrens title schemes is uncited, and immediately followed by descriptions of several cases where Torrens title was adopted (often poorly) and later abandoned.
Fascinating, how is ownership established if there is no single source of truth?
I feel the answer to this is also crucial to understanding OP. It could be a minor annoyance or the real possibility to lose your land.
There is: the county clerk in the county where the land is located.
By contrast, in the Torrens system, whatever the government records say are final. If you are the innocent victim of a mistake by the government (or a fraud against it), the government has to compensate you; but you don’t actually get the land back if it has since been sold to an innocent purchaser.
First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.
Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction. So there cannot be a "single source of truth" in the sense you appear to be using the term, even in the Torrens system.
I don’t know what High Court case they are talking about-they didn’t give a citation just a vague recollection-they might be remembering wrong.
But the assumption in the Torrens system is the government database is correct. There are rare exceptions-e.g. the so-called “paramount interests”-but they are narrow and very much exceptional. By contrast, in the US system, a court is totally open to entertaining the argument the county title records are incorrect, in many states there is no presumption against such an argument, and you aren’t required to convince the court some narrowly drawn exception applies before it will consider the argument. (Actually Australia still has something like the “US system” too-we call it “old title”-but old title is extremely rare. Anyone trying to sell an old title lot is going to convert it to Torrens before selling it. I don’t think you can legally sell it until you do so. So in practice the only old title lots left are those which haven’t changed ownership-other than by inheritance-in many decades.)
> Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction.
That’s not how it works. Overseas contracts, court judgements, etc - if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.
As I pointed out in another post downthread, that is also the case in US jurisdictions that record deeds: if the deed transferring ownership isn't recorded with the county clerk, the transfer doesn't legally exist.
The difference, at least in many US jurisdictions, as I pointed out in that other post, is that in those US jurisdictions the county clerk does not guarantee that the deed is final, any other legal challenges notwithstanding. For example, I think someone else upthread gave the example of someone making a will in a different state that left property to their children instead of their spouse. When that person dies, yes, whoever is supposed to inherit the property would need to record a transfer deed in the county where the property is located to effect the transfer. But their legal right to do so depends on a will executed in a different state.
In many US jurisdictions, the county clerk is not responsible for checking to see if the person recording the transfer deed has the legal right to do so; that's up to other parties involved. But under the Torrens system you describe, it seems like the government land registry would have to do such a check in order to make the guarantee it makes. But how can it? It doesn't control or have access to things like wills in other jurisdictions that determine who has the legal right to take title to a property.