CONVEYANCE (from convey, OF. conveier, convoier, Fr. convoyer, from 1\IL. conviere, to ac compa-ny. from corn-, together + via, way; con nected with Tab. wcza, wagon-track, Skt. vaha, road, Goth. wigs, ORG. wee, Ger. trey, AS. weg, Engl. way, from Lat. reherc, Skt. vah, to carry). The technical term for a transfer of real property the word having in law retained its earlier English meaning of a transfer, or passing. of a thing from one to an other. It comprehends all manner of trans fers—whether by livery of seizin, judgment of law, or deed—whereby any interest in land is vested in another, but it is strictly applicable only to transfers inter c-i-cos, and does not include devises of land by will, or the devolution of an estate upon the heir by descent, or to the husband and wife of their curtesy and dower, or to the State of its right by escheat or forfeiture; neither does it include involuntary transfers of property, as by bankruptcy, the creation of judgment or statutory liens, etc. It is, thus, a term of much narrower signification than alienation, and somewhat more restricted than common, assurance, though it IA much wider than the term grant, as it includes transfers of interests which do not require. or which cannot be effected by, that process. A lease for years, even though made by parol, is a conveyance, and so is a mortgage, a declaration of trust, a marriage settlement, the creation of a power affecting land. etc. The term is also applied to the transfer of title to vessels, but not to the alienation of other species of personal property. The general substitution of written for parol and ceremonial transfers of land, effected by the Statute of Frauds (29 Car. II., c. 3, 1676), has made the term conveyance one of common appli cation to the instrument of transfer, as well as to the transaction itself.
The difficult and technical character of the law of real property appears at its worst in the complicated processes which have from time to time been developed for transferring such prop erty. The earlier methods of the common-law system depended for their efficacy largely on the notoriety of the transaction, the feoffment, or livery of seizin, being a public ceremonial, and the subsequently devised processes of 'levying a fine' and 'suffering a recovery' being attended with the publicity of judicial proceedings. These `notorious' conveyances, as they were termed, have in modern times given place to more con venient modes of transfer, which are called `secret' conveyances. This salutary change has been brought about by the general substitution of written deeds of transfer, which take effect upon delivery, for the older and more formal methods, and the form and style of these deeds, formerly in the highest degree technical and complicated, have in recent years been greatly simplified by statute. The general prevalence
of registry acts and of the practice of recording in the United States does not affect the secret character of the conveyance, as such, this being complete upon the delivery of the deed, the object of the recording being only to guard against a subsequent fraudulent transfer of the same property.
The earlier modes of conveyance at the com mon law, besides their notoriety, and in part as a consequence thereof, had the extraordinary operation of transferring a greater estate in the land than the transferrer himself had. That is to say. a tenant for life or years might by feoff ment convey the premises in fee simple to a.
stranger. It is true the fee this conveyed was a defensible one; but it placed the landlord— reversioner or remainderman—in the situation of a disseizee, and forced him into the disad vantageous position of a plaintiff seeking to re cover his land from one who claimed it under a notorious public conveyance. This was called a 'tortious,' or wrongful, conveyance, and the term tortious was thus applied to all the earlier modes of alienation which possessed this curi ous power. Conveyances by deed. on the other hand, have never been attended with these con seivences, have never possessed a tortious opera tion, and have, therefore, been distinguished as 'innocent' conveyances. Whatever they may pur port to do, they pass only such interest as the grantor can lawfully convey. All modes of con veyance are now of this character, the older conveyances and the tortious effect of them hav ing been dime away with, both in England and in the United States, by statute. A curious sur vival of this obsolete and discredited doctrine appears in the modern American doctrine of con veyance by estoppel (q.v.). Notwithstanding the improvements which have been effected in recent years in the substitution of secret for notorious conveyances and the simplification of the former, the conveyance of land continues to be a much more cumbrous. uncertain, and expensive opera tion than the transfer of personal property. Many suggestions have been made looking to the elimination of these objections and the assimila tion of the two species of property in this re spect, and in several of the United States and in some of the British colonies different systems for achieving these objects have been adopted and are now on trial. These will be explained under the titles LAND TRANSFER: REGISTRATION