What is Legal Description?

The legal description is just an address, as some may think. But it has more complications than an address. It is important to know why legal description is different from an address. You need to know this if you will be making a binding contract.

More than 300 years ago in England, the Statute for Prevention of Frauds and Perjuries is passed by the Parliament. This requires contracts to be written and also signed before they will be in courts. By this, the court can determine the credibility of the contract. The court will not believe if anyone will say that an oral contract was done. Whether the parties had oral contract or not, there should be a written contract so that the court can enforce it. These days, lawyers and legal scholars always refer to the English Law’s “statute fraud”.

The court always follows the legal system of England. By this, all states adopted laws that are one way or the other reflects to the “Statute of Frauds”. Anything that is related to real property must be written and signed by the two parties that are being bound.

The court adopted the “Statute of Frauds” but found out that it needs to have a description and location of the land without depending on any other evidence. 60 years ago, the court State Supreme Court rejected the content of the case which states that a description is needed. But after 50 years, in the year 1999, the court affirmed this rule though it’s unusually strict.

That’s why legal description exists. When having an agreement of purchase as well as sale, it is very important to write not only the description of the property; but also the legal description. The legal description not only indicates the block, the subdivision and the lot, it also includes the government’s survey, and the “meets and bounds”. Meets and bounds is a method where the property is described according to its distance, its landmark and its angle. For you to get a legal description, you can find it at the commitment of the preliminary title or its former deed of property. You can search it online through King County’s Record Section.

What Happens When the Contract Doesn’t Have a Legal Description?

The contract will not be legalized or bonded and if either the seller or the buyer runs away, he can take no consequences at all. It can really affect if the legal description property being bonded is not accurate or nor credible the legality of the contract between the two parties. Legal Description can also identify what is the boundary of the property when the buyer wants to improve or renovate it. So, it is important to know the boundaries to avoid other consequence. The system of lots and blocks is a simple method to legally describe a property. This system usually begins with a map or subdivision plot. The divided smaller blocks are also divided into individual lands that are within the area of the block. Real property refers to “Section, Block and Lot”.