Adding or Removing an Owner From a Jamaican Land Title

A spelling slip between the title and your papers is corrected, and the Agency treats minor differences and major ones differently. A marriage is noted on the title by its own application. Adding a spouse, a child or anyone else gives that person an ownership interest, and an interest moves only by transfer. Removing a living co-owner needs that owner's signature on a transfer, or a court order. An owner who has died is dealt with according to how the land was held. Everything starts with a current search of the title.

Before a name is added the owners decide how they will own together, because the choice decides what happens when one of them dies. Joint tenants hold with a right of survivorship: when one dies the property passes to the survivor. Tenants in common hold shares of their own, equal or unequal, and a deceased owner's share passes through the estate. Unequal shares are written into the transfer, because a share nobody recorded is argued over after a death.

A valuation, which you obtain, goes to the tax assessment, and the transfer is then signed, stamped and registered. Calling the transfer a gift, or putting natural love and affection on the form, does not take the transfer tax, stamp duty or registration fee away. Our article on gifting land in Jamaica explains what a family gift actually involves.

The brothers who agree that one of them will leave have changed nothing until the register changes. The one leaving signs the transfer, or a court orders it. Where a lender holds a mortgage, its written approval comes first, because coming off the title and coming off the loan are separate matters. A brother who leaves the title and keeps the mortgage in his name has given away the house and kept the debt. A written completion statement shows what passes between the two of them, so that nobody argues about the arithmetic later.

Where people will go on owning together, especially in unequal shares, a co-ownership agreement records who pays what, who takes the rent, how a sale is to happen and what happens if they fall out. The title fixes the registered interests. The agreement governs how the owners manage them between themselves.

An owner can sign abroad, in the way the document and the country require, or act through a Power of Attorney, which for registered land is stamped and deposited at the Office of Titles before it can be used. The Agency's own guidance on name differences is the official word on the first of the five.

Bring the title and tell us who is coming on, who is going off or what name has changed, and we will tell you which of the five it is and what it involves.