NOT REGISTERED

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 232, 28 June 1935, Page 12

NOT REGISTERED

How Wellington Man Lost 50-acre Section £2OO IN CASH ALSO Probably the best method of enforcing on people the necessity of registering anything in the form of a mortgage or deed of transfer—a process often neglected—would be by relating how a well-known and worthy citizen of Wellington lost £209, representing the sum advanced on a 50-acre block of land at Apata, Cook County (near Tauranga). This block was given in 1869 to a soldier, one John Diggles, under the New Zealand Settlements Act of 1863 and Its amendments. Diggles, like most of the soldiers of those times, never saw the land. He assigned his right to one, Amelia Levy,- of Lower Hutt. Then It passed from her tot one, Standen, from Standen to Edwards, from Edwards to Somerville, and from the last-named to the Wellington business man who lost the £2OO.

It seenis that though there was a document of transfer drawn up in each case none of them was registered. So that when last year it was found that no rates had been paid'on the block for some years the land, which had been conveyed by some process to his Majesty the King on February 9 last year, was sold, under the provisions of the Rating Act, realising £23/0/3. The actual owner knew nothing of the sale until recently, aud when he made inquiries through the registrar of the Supreme Court at Auckland he was informed that the property had come into the possession of the Crown and had been sold by that authority under the Rating Act. Through not having attended to the registration of the deed of transfer he had lost his £2OO and the land. It seems that the adjoining owners benefited when they secured this fair-class land at a trifle over 9/- an acre. So the memory of John Diggles lives on only in a sheet of parchment hearing the seal of the New Zealand Government atyi the signature of W. J. Gundry, surveyor. Moral: Always register a deed of transfer.