GUIDE TO BUYERS AND SELLERS HOW TO DRAW A CONTRACT. By GEO. W. VAN SICLEN, Counsellor-at-Law. "When I can read my title clear.”—Dr. Watts. SECOND EDITION. Together with THE REAL PROPERTY LAW of the State of New York, which takes effect October 1, 1896. INDEXED. THE REAL ESTATE RECORD AND BUILDERS' GUIDE, Publishers. 14-16 Vesey Street, New York, 1896. PREFACE. It is certainly pleasant to have one's publisher insist on a second edition. The three thousand copies of the first edition of this Handybook were some time ago exhausted. The Title Guarantee and Trust Company, of New York, which I planned and founded in 1883 upon the lines laid down herein, has grown, under other management than my own, from a capital of $500,000, to have a capital and surplus of about $4,500,000, and transacted in 1895-6 a business of over $20,000,000. But few changes need to be made in the text of the book. The New York Court of Appeals has recently, May, 1896, differed from my views in regard to a quitclaim deed (see p. 31), and held in the case of Wilhelm vs. Wilken, that a purchaser by a quitclaim deed can be a bona fide purchaser for value without notice, and protected by the Recording Act. In affirming this proposition the opinion of the Court which was prepared by Justice Gray, and in which all concurred, stated: "The practice of transferring title to real estate through quitclaim deeds has not been uncommon in this State, and, in the absence of any facts creating a suspicion as to the transaction of transfer, there is nothing especially significant in the use of such a mode of conveyance. The point is, what is effected by the deed; and where, as in the present case, the subject of the release and quitclaim is a certain particularly described property with all the appurtenances and all the estate, right, title and interest of the grantor, with the "habendum" to the grantee, her heirs and assigns forever, a conveyance of the real estate, within the meaning of the act, is evident. The terms of such a deed imply that Tallman professed to have an interest in the premises, which he could convey, and it is the duty of the Court to so construe a deed, purporting to convey land for a valuable consideration, as to give effect to the intentions of the parties, and to hold it to be a conveyance of the land." I did not use to think so. And it is, perhaps, not necessary to require a husband to join with his wife in executing a deed (see p. 22), in view of the statute authorizing a wife to make a will or sell her real estate without the consent of her husband; but until the husband's right by the curtesy is explicitly abolished by law, situations can arise in which a careful conveyancer may be in doubt as to whether there may not yet be a husband living who could claim a life estate in property his wife had conveyed. Many of the reforms suggested and indicated in the first edi |