Title

1. Title means the source or basis of a legal right. The word comes from the Roman term titulus, which French law adopted as titre. It refers to the facts by which a person acquires a right.

1. Title is the source of a right, and not the right itself. The right is the result, and the title is the cause.
2. Every legal right needs a recognised title. Without one, the right cannot exist in law.
3. Title consists of facts that the law recognises. A court asks whether the facts are proved and whether the law treats them as creating a right.
4. Title links a person with the thing or right that he holds. A buyer relies on his sale deed, an heir relies on a will or on the law of succession, and a donee relies on a gift deed.
5. Title explains why a person is entitled to a right. It answers the question "on what ground do you claim this?"
6. Title is different from possession. The owner who has let his flat holds the title, and the tenant holds possession. A person can therefore have title without possession, and possession without title.

1. A title is a legal fact because it produces legal consequences. The law attaches a result to the fact. Without such facts, rights cannot be claimed or enforced.
2. Legal facts do three things. They create rights, transfer rights and extinguish rights. A person who buys a house under a sale deed gets a new right. The seller loses his right, so the same fact transfers the right from one person to another. If the house is destroyed by fire, the right to the house ends.
3. Whenever the law attaches consequences to a fact, that fact becomes a title. Title is therefore the juristic reason behind the existence of a right.

Salmond divides the facts that make up a title into two kinds.

Investitive (Vestitive) Facts

1. Investitive facts create or transfer rights. They bring a right into existence or give it to another person.
2. A sale of property, a gift and inheritance are examples. In each of them, a new person acquires a right that he did not have before.
3. Long possession can also be investitive. Under the Limitation Act, 1963, a person who stays on private land for twelve years against the owner acquires ownership. The old owner's right ends, and the possessor's right begins.

Divestitive Facts

1. Divestitive facts extinguish or destroy rights. They bring an existing right to an end.
2. Abandonment, lapse of time and destruction of the subject matter are examples. If a person gives up a bicycle with no intention of taking it back, he loses his right to it.
3. Lapse of time ends a right in a clear way. Section 27 of the Limitation Act, 1963 provides that when the time to sue for possession of property expires, the owner's right to that property is extinguished.

The modes of acquisition explain how a title comes into being. They are different from the kinds of title above.

Original Title

Derivative Title

1. An agreement is a bilateral act involving two or more parties. Salmond calls bilateral acts agreements because they rest on mutual consent.
2. Agreements are one of the most important sources of title. They create rights and obligations, and they transfer rights from one person to another.
3. Agreements may be valid, void or voidable.

1. Only a valid agreement creates an enforceable title. A void agreement gives the buyer nothing to enforce.
2. For immovable property, the law also requires a particular form. Under Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882, a sale of immovable property worth one hundred rupees or more can be made only by a registered instrument. Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908 requires such instruments to be registered.
3. A registered deed is the only safe route to title. In Suraj Lamp & Industries Pvt. Ltd. v. State of Haryana (2012), many buyers had acquired property by an agreement to sell and a general power of attorney, without a registered deed. The Supreme Court held that such transactions do not transfer ownership.

1. A suit for injunction does not decide title. An injunction suit deals with possession and with preventing interference. It does not decide who owns the property.
2. Where title is disputed, the proper remedy is a suit for declaration of title. A prohibitory injunction alone is not enough. The court cannot finally decide title without a prayer for declaration.
3. The Supreme Court has set out which suit to file in each situation. In Anathula Sudhakar v. P. Buchi Reddy (2008), the Court divided property disputes into three cases.

Title is the foundation of legal rights. It explains how rights begin, continue and end, and without it no right can be claimed or enforced in law. Title therefore has a central place in jurisprudence, especially in matters of ownership and property.