By Section 4 of the Conveyancing Act, 1882 : " (1) Where a lease is made under a power contained in a settlement, will, Act of Parliament, or other instrument, any preliminary contract for or re lating to the lease shall not, for the purpose of the deduction of title to an intended assign, form part of the title, or evidence of the title, to the lease." Upon the death of an owner of leasehold property, the estate becomes vested in the personal representatives (executors or ad ministrators) of the deceased. When, there fore, the deeds of leasehold property are lodged by a borrower who has obtained the property consequent upon the death of the previous owner, it should be remembered that the legal estate may still be held by the personal representatives, and that the borrower, if he inherited the property, re quires a conveyance from the representa tives, and if he had the property left to him by will, he requires a conveyance from, or the formal assent of, the representatives.
Where the deeds of leasehold property are deposited as security, they should as a rule be accompanied by the original lease, but it may occur that the original lease included two properties, and is not along with the deeds given as security. There
should, however, be an attested copy of the lease, or it should be abstracted, and an acknowledgment given for its production. A purchaser of leasehold property is entitled to an abstract of the lease even though more than, sixty years old.
Where a sub-lease is deposited as security, it should be accompanied by an attested copy of the original lease.
If parts of a leasehold property have been sub-leased, the counter parts of the sub-leases should accompany a deposit of the lease or assignment thereof.
By the Finance (1909-10) Act, 19] 0, Section 75, it is enacted that the stamp duties chargeable under the heading " Lease or Tack " in the Stamp Act, 1891, shall be double the duties which would have been chargeable immediately before the passing of this Act under that heading, but this Section shall not apply in the case of leases or tacks on which a fixed duty of a penny is chargeable under that heading. (The Finance Act was passed April 29, 1910.) By the Stamp Act, 1891, the duty is as follows :