Release, Sale, Gift, Grant, Decree of Property

Release, Sale, Gift, Grant, Decree

Release is an act whereby a person relinquishes a claim, interest, title over a specified property which he or she has against another person.

Each of the Joint owners or Co-owners of property by intestate succession or by joint purchase owns equal or unequal share, but a definite share in the property as per succession or proportionate to their investment and which are undivided and not physically unascertainable.

The release must be in written form and the deed is to be compulsorily registered. In a release, both the releasor and releasee are the owners of the property and the release does not create any title, but there is a transfer of share and the hence it must be in written form and the deed has to be registered compulsorily. The release deed is similar to a sale deed. In a release deed, consideration is optional and in a sale deed, consideration is a must. The released property shall become the self acquired property of releasee.

The proplawyer while scrutinizing the release deed must see that the origin of the interest, claim or right is clearly spelt out, the releaser had knowledge about the nature and quantum of claim or interest which is/ was released and the release is clearly and sufficiently expressed and thus there is no further claim from the releaser against the release.

The proplawyer may also see the reason behind the relinquishment, it may that the property is impartible nature, releaser is well settled or residing at remote place or the release is on considerable consideration.

Sale, as per Sec.54 of Transfer of Property Act, is a transfer of ownership by the owner to another person in exchange of price paid or promised to pay or partly paid and promised to pay for the remaining.

Exchange of price or value is called consideration. In a sale, consideration is an essential requirement without which sale is invalid. The important and valuable thing that evidences a sale between two parties and thus the transfer of property and gives legal protection to the ownership of property by the buyer is the sale deed, which is to be compulsorily registered as per Sec.17 of Registration Act.

The seller and buyer would have a negotiation on the terms and condition of the sale and settle the same and then enter into an agreement for sale. The agreement may e oral or written and optionally registered. However, the parties wish to have written agreement and prefer to have it registered.

A sale deed executed after compliance of the T & C of the agreement is valuable legal document that recites how the seller acquired the property, what is the consideration, mode of consideration, warranties by the seller to the buyer and the indemnity and also the restrictions, if any. Thus a sale deed acts as an essential title deed of the property. The sale deed has to be scrutinised as given in some other pages to come.

Gift is a voluntary transfer of a property by a person to a third person or personality in consideration of love and affection. Personality means judicial personality that includes organizations. There is no price money for the transfer of property as consideration and there is no promise for consideration.

The gift deed is similar to a sale deed in all aspects except the consideration, sometimes, in gift, conditions as to alienation and also on use of yields from the property may be imposed and hence the prop-lawyer has to scrutinize the deed on all essential requirement and also to check its reflection in EC.

Grant is a gift made by Government to its subjects (also locally called as Assignment) and the Decree is the order made by the jurisdictional and competent Court on disputes, if any, over the property. The Grant/ Assignment and Decree may not be reflected in EC.

The prop-lawyer has to scrutinize the grant or decree for its genuineness, conditions or restrictions on its use, alienation, etc and check for its compliances.