How land held by more than one person is owned, severed and sold, and how covenants, charges and other encumbrances bind the title a buyer ultimately takes.
Whether a sale of co-owned or burdened land goes through cleanly turns on whose signatures are needed and which obligations survive the transfer. This chapter starts with the structure of co-ownership — legal and beneficial title, joint tenancies and tenancies in common — then the presumptions of beneficial ownership where there is no express declaration, and the ways a beneficial joint tenancy can be severed. It moves on to what a Form A restriction means for a surviving co-owner selling after a death, and how overreaching allows a buyer to take free of beneficial interests provided money is paid to at least two trustees. The closing sections deal with encumbrances themselves: the divide between restrictive and positive covenants, the workarounds used because the burden of a positive covenant does not run with freehold land, the options when a covenant or mortgage stands in the way of a sale, and the distinct rules governing covenants and severance in unregistered land.
