The Deed Description

• The deed description provides the legal details of a property owned by a named party in the deed. This detail will cover all the aspects of the property so that it can be uniquely identified. In the case of property, the deed will spell out where the property is, any structures on the land, the property lines, the direction of the structure and property on a compass basis (i.e. north, west, south, east) and the size of the property.
  
  

Common Error Causes

• Deeds can include errors as a result of office clerk typing mistakes, property line and related mapping data mistakes on measurement, inversion of compass references (i.e. NW for northwest instead of SW for southwest) or bad descriptions of landmarks on a real estate property. These problems can create legal headaches later on if the property ownership is subsequently disputed and litigated. A common example is a legal dispute as to where a real estate property line exists between two neighbors.
  
  

Filing a Corrective/Confirmatory Deed

• The legal method for correcting a deed with a bad description or erroneous data involves filing a corrective deed or a confirmatory deed. Because such an approach can be highly risky in terms of possibly changing property rights, the advice and help of a property attorney is important. For a legally binding correction, some jurisdictions require the new deed be resigned by the same parties that originally transferred the property under the old, incorrect deed. This can be problematic and time-consuming if the old property owner isn't nearby anymore or alive. Thus the help of attorneys may be needed to avoid losing rights prematurely if, for instance, a legal descendent doesn't like what his grandfather gave away in the original deed.
  
  

Simple Rerecording a Deed

• Just resubmitting an existing deed with typographical corrections typically won't work with municipal recording offices, and it also won't be legally acceptable. The one-sided corrections can be challenged in court as never having been agreed to by the first party that granted the property to the second party. So even if the deed does get recorded with the corrections, it can be nullified upon review.