Muniment

A Muniment or Muniment of Title is a legal term for a document, title deed or other evidence, that indicates ownership of an asset. The word is derived from the Latin noun munimentum, meaning a "fortification, bulwark, defence or protection". Thus "muniments of title" means the written evidence which a land owner can use to defend title to his estate.

An example of Muniment of Title is the use of a death certificate of a joint tenant to prove that title resides with the surviving joint tenant.

In the USA the definition of "muniment" may differ in statutes state by state. For example, states often have their own version of a Marketable Record Title Act (MRTA) which will extinguish various interests, restrictions, or claims to a property within a certain time period unless renewed during that time period by muniments.

In the medieval period substantial landowners made use of dedicated chambers known as "muniments rooms" for the secure storage of muniments of title. Before the advent of capitalism and the stock-market investment, the ownership of land and operational manors was the principal asset used by the English gentry for the long-term storage of wealth. It was essential to prove "devolution of title" to an estate, which neccessitated the retention of every historical deed which had been used at some time over decades if not centuries to transfer legal ownership of that estate. For example if it had been determined historically in a court of law that "person X" had good title to an estate at some past date, the present owner, in order to have equally good title, needed to prove that he had obtained, in a valid manner, the asset directly or indirectly from person X. For example, if a royal charter survived granting a manor to person X, that would constitute an ideal starting point from which to prove devolution of title. Thus several charters, indentures, entails, marriage settlements and last will and testaments of varying dates and contained within several sheets of parchment might form the complete devolution of title for just one estate. Many gentry families in England held particular estates for many centuries (the Berkeley family has held Berkeley Castle since the 12th century and holds it still in 2015), generating a large volume of documents of title as the estate passed down the generations of the family. Such often large and highly verbose documents were generally folded up to form small packets and were then sealed with wax, with an epitome or summary of the document written in ink on the finished packet.

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