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Land registration is a system by which the ownership of estates in land, is recorded and registered, usually by government, in order to provide evidence of title and to facilitate dealing. Land registration is record listing a plot of land's registered owner and any legal charged attached to it. Our societies and economies need good laws on how we use land. Where people own land, proof of ownership is critical, and land registration is often a key part of this proof. Land registration tends to focus on proof of ownership. It tends to let the rest of the law deal with what kinds of rights people can have in land. It is based on the English "common law," which is used in many places. These include much of the United States of America and many places that have been part of the British Commonwealth. Under the common law, a person usually proved ownership by showing that the person, and people from whom the person acquired the land, had used the land as owners for a period. Transfers of the land, and other dealings, were usually reflected in writing, and so the person partly proved ownership through documents. In practice, the period covered by these documents usually began with what appeared to be a good transfer of at least a fixed age, say, 60 years. This kind of proof isn't reliable or easy to check. Under the first kind of land registration, called "document registration," the government keeps a record of the documents. The law usually says that buyers and others are usually subject to all registered documents, and not usually to unregistered documents. This encourages people to register their documents. And it simplifies the task of buyers and others in finding out what documents they need to check. But they still need to track the ownership through the registered documents. Under the first kind of land registration, as time goes by and land is divided, the register gets longer and bigger. The law usually tries to limit the period covered by the proof. It does so by saying that good proof beginning with what appears to be a good transfer of at least a fixed age, say, 30 or 40 years, gives good ownership, as far as ownership depends on documents. Conversely, any right not shown by that proof ceases to be valid. In the United States of America, these laws are called "marketable title" laws. There's a good "uniform law" for them that many states have used as a model. Despite the first kind of land registration, and "marketable title" laws, proving ownership still wasn't easy. If the land was dealt with often, buyers and others were repeatedly checking the same documents. The register could be simplified if there was a separate register for each piece of land, but often there wasn't a separate register, perhaps because it depended on being able to describe the land accurately, for example, through plans prepared by land surveyors.
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