A court has highlighted a legal step Kenyans can take to protect their land from unauthorised transfers after a family discovered that property belonging to a deceased relative had been registered in another person's name years after his death.

🇰🇪 Breaking It Down

Under the Land Registration Act, a person with a legitimate interest in land can lodge a caution against the property to prevent certain dealings from being registered without their consent or a court order.

A caution is essentially a legal notice placed on a property's land register to protect someone's legal interest in the land.

Kenyans can also seek a restriction where there are concerns over fraud, improper dealings, or another sufficient reason, and a restriction can limit or prevent transactions involving the property while the issue is being addressed.

📌 What You Need to Know

Another important step is conducting an official land search, which enables a person to establish the registered owner and identify cautions, restrictions, charges and other interests recorded against the property.

These measures can be particularly important for inherited or family land, where ownership may go unchecked for years, and acting quickly after discovering an unexplained transaction can also help prevent further dealings with the property.

The importance of monitoring land records emerged in a recent Environment and Land Court case involving a family that discovered a disputed registration affecting property belonging to a deceased relative.

In the mentioned case, the landowner died in 1971, but the court found that another person was registered as proprietor of the property about 11 years later, raising questions over how the transfer had been effected.

Moreover, the family discovered the registration in 2014 and reported the matter to the police before lodging a restriction at the Land Registry. The restriction remained in place as the dispute was pursued through various institutions and eventually before the court.

In a judgment delivered by Justice M.A. Odeny, the court found that there was no evidence explaining how the property had moved from the deceased owner to the person subsequently registered as proprietor.

📰 Source: Kenyans.co.ke