LEGAL NOTICE: Most problems in the Tasmanian Lands, Titles system have arisen from
historical mistake and there are no implications of wrong doing on the part of any
person or corporation associated with these dealings or titles, their predecessors or successors in
title. The information is provided for educational purposes only.
If we consider the previous pages the question then must be asked: Are banks aware of these anomolies in
Tasmanian land titles? It is commonly said that the title must be good as
the bank has mortgaged it. This belief that banks must be scrutinizing land titles is a major source of our deep
seated belief that Tasmanian (and Australian) land tenure in general, must be sound. This assumption needs to be looked at closely.
This is the title to my house at Riverside, Tasmania.
However I was issued a new "computerized" title, 55429/11, with the first edition issuing on 1st March, 1994.
I obtained this copy of my title from my mortgagee late in 1995.
However at the same time I obtained a search copy of my old "paper" title 4267/27 from the bank.
You will note that this version of the title was still uncancelled as at 15th September, 1994 which is some
some 6 months after the computerized title 55429/11 was issued. This problem of the two co-existing folios was
not picked up by the bank.
When I ask for a search copy of the title 4267/27 from the Lands, Titles Office, I receive this version of the title.
An explanation for the different versions of the title which are provided for myself and the bank is that
the cancelled and uncancelled version of the title are filed in different places and that different versions are
obtained depending on which version is "called" by the searcher.
Another interesting difference between the two versions of the same title number is that the scribbled-on version of 4267/27 shows an impression of fingers on the edges of the
paper!
Questions which could be asked here are:
Are mortgagees aware of this situation where there are effectively two titles
to the one property?
Why didn't the bank's internal auditing provisions pick up the fact that they had filed two versions of the same folio
which were co-existing?
For systems analysts - what processing problems are indicated in the situation described above?
For lawyers - what is the legal effect of the existence of two folios for the one property?
