The Lowell City Council met this past Tuesday evening; however, I was away and didn’t have time to watch the meeting, so I’ll write about it in next Sunday’s newsletter. Today’s topic is “title theft” the term used to describe the fraudulent transfer of real estate. The prompt for that topic was a recent Lowell Sun editorial, “Digital crooks looking to steal your property” (July 28, 2026, print edition) that brought useful attention to the issue but also contained a substantial misstatement of the law and an equally important omission. (I sent a Letter to the Editor to the Sun in response but haven’t heard or seen anything about it.)

While it’s important to be aware of the possibility of title theft, it is exceedingly rare. In my thirty years as register of deeds of the Northern District of Middlesex County, I only encountered three instances of it with only one of them being the type of crime contemplated by those who warn of title theft. (The other two instances involved fraud by a family member or a care giver.) Before addressing the Sun article and explaining some relevant legal concepts, I’ll start with brief summaries of the three real life deed fraud incidents I encountered. (With the caveat I’m just writing from memory and haven’t drilled back into the records for precise statements of the facts.)

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The one true instance of “title theft” involved an elderly couple who lived in a suburban neighborhood. They had an adult child who lived in the region but not close by, although the child actively assisted in the care of the parents. Both parents eventually became disabled and relocated to care facilities and routine maintenance of the house was not done. Eventually, both parents passed away. Not ready to deal with the house, the adult child (the sole heir of the couple), held off on probating their estates. Real estate taxes on the house were paid, but not much else was done.

One day, a man walked into the registry of deeds and dropped off a deed to be recorded. The deed purported to convey this particular property from the parents to a third party. The deed contained what appeared to be the signatures of both parents, was notarized, contained the five or six other things required, and was accompanied by the necessary fee, so it was recorded.

At some point after that, the man to whom the property was conveyed called a local real estate broker and asked them to list the property for sale. Fortunately, the broker knew the history of the property including that the owners had died and that there was an adult child involved. Not knowing how to contact the adult child, the broker called the police who, because of frequent medical calls to the property in the past, still had the adult child’s contact information and got in touch.

The adult child immediately called the registry of deeds and spoke to me. Their story sounded credible and there was enough about the deed and other information I could find online to corroborate the adult child’s side of the story. I explained that while they should fully cooperate with the police who had promised to open an investigation, it was critical that they immediately hire a lawyer to file the necessary paperwork in court to begin unwinding the transaction.

A lawyer called me the next day on the adult child’s behalf. I provided copies of the deed that had been recorded and other relevant documents and explained all that I had been able to discover about the transaction. The lawyer promptly filed a lawsuit in Superior Court and obtained a lis pendens which is a notice of a lawsuit about the state of the title to property. Once the lis pendens was recorded at the registry of deeds, anyone who acted in reliance of that recent deed would be on notice that something might be wrong with it. Put another way, with the lis pendens on record, no legitimate buyer or lender would do business with the purported owner until the lawsuit was resolved.

Soon after that, the lawyer submitted affidavits to the court and obtained judgment in the form of a court order voiding the fraudulent deed. That order was recorded at the registry. With the fraudulent deed cancelled by the court order, the adult child was then able to probate their parents’ estates and dispose of the property however they wished.

I’ll explain some of the legal and procedural concepts involved in this story later in this essay, but for now let’s move onto a more common deed fraud scenario, one involving a family member.

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Sometime in the 1960s, Mom and Dad purchased a home for themselves and their two children, a Son and a Daughter. Mom died at a young age, Daughter grew up, married and moved to another part of the country. As Son grew to adulthood, he remained in the family home with Dad. As Dad’s health declined, Son provided some level of care to Dad with both remaining in the home. Notably, Son had never held a job for very long.

Towards the end of his life, Dad went to a lawyer and had a will drafted and executed. The will left the house equally to Son and Daughter. However, the day before Dad died, he purportedly executed a deed transferring ownership of the house solely to Son. A few days after Dad died, Son recorded this deed at the registry of deeds.

A few months later, Daughter called the registry of deeds and asked who owned the house according to registry records. I spoke with her, told her of the deed from Father to Son, and sent her a copy of it. Before getting off the phone, Daughter insisted that the deed had to be fraudulent. I urged her to contact the police and to give the investigating officer my contact information, but more importantly, to hire her own lawyer to take appropriate civil action to protect her rights in the property.

When I was in law school, my teacher for Wills and Trusts, a nationally respected figure in that field, one day told us, “You learn a lot about a family when the surviving parent dies.” By that, he meant that siblings often disagree with the disposition of property by their parents. That observation of human nature is well-known to anyone in the legal field. So, while I didn’t dismiss this claim out of hand and sincerely urged Daughter to pursue it, nothing about this situation distinguished it from many other calls I had previously received from heirs disappointed by a parental bequest.

Except this one turned out to be different. Daughter was persistent, both with the police and with retaining her own lawyer. The lawyer filed a lawsuit seeking to void the deed. At the trial, Daughter’s lawyer got the notary public who notarized the deed to admit that he did not personally see Dad sign the deed. Notary was a friend of Son who came to Notary with the document, which was already signed, assured Notary that the signature was Father’s, said Father was feeling poorly that day, and asked Notary to notarize the document so Son could get it recorded. Notary complied and Son recorded the document.

Also at the trial, Son testified that Dad did in fact sign the deed just the day before he died and that everything he told Notary had been truthful. The judge didn’t believe him and ruled that the deed was void which meant that property ownership would be controlled by the will. (I assume Daughter included a claim for money damages against Son as part of this lawsuit, otherwise he would still end up with half the property notwithstanding his wrongdoing, but I don’t know for sure.)

A postscript of this case: About a year later, investigators from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office interviewed me in preparation for a criminal trial against Son for fraud. I heard nothing further about it until I randomly encountered one of the people who had interviewed me. They volunteered that Son had pleaded guilty and had been sentenced to a short (but still significant) sentence of incarceration.

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The final case will be brief. It involved an elderly person in poor health who had moved from the home they owned into a long-term care facility. Elder had distant relatives who were in touch with Elder during their lifetime, but no family members that seemed especially close. Shortly before Elder died, a neighbor who had assisted the Elder in the care and upkeep of the home, came to the care facility accompanied by a notary public and had the Elder sign a deed that conveyed the property to Neighbor. The notary witnessed this and notarized the deed. Neighbor brought the deed to the registry of deeds and recorded it. Although the deed recited that Neighbor had paid $100,000 for the property, Neighbor had not done that by the time Elder died shortly thereafter.

Heirs of Elder vigorously questioned the propriety of this transfer. The police investigated and charges were brought against Neighbor. I don’t have the outcome of the criminal case documented; however, I found a deed on the registry of deeds website from several years after all of this took place. In this deed, Neighbor conveyed the property back to the lawyer for the estate of the deceased Elder. The deed states it was done pursuant to an agreement in a Middlesex Superior Court case, citing a criminal docket number. The property is now owned by an unrelated third party.

While we know what happened to the real estate, I don’t know for sure the ultimate disposition of any legal case, criminal or otherwise. However, I believe the prosecution’s theory was that at the time the deed was executed, Elder, because of their medical and mental state, was unable to exercise free will and that Neighbor had imposed their will on Elder.

I’ve been a lawyer for 40 years now. Regrettably, the only thing I see that’s unique about this case was the criminal prosecution because instances of elders being unduly influenced by family members, friends, care givers or others, are not as rare as we would like them to be.

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So, those are my stories. What’s important to know about the relevant law and procedure?

First, Massachusetts law is quite clear: a forged deed does not convey title. Consequently, in the first two scenarios described above, neither deed conveyed legal ownership of the property to the grantee shown on the deed even though the deed (1) looked legitimate, and (2) had been recorded at the registry of deeds. This is a BIG DEAL and is almost always omitted from advertisements and editorials that warn of title theft. It should also ease the concerns of those who worry about falling victim to this type of fraud.

BUT even though title does not pass to the fraudster, the true homeowner is still left with a legal and paperwork mess to resolve. As illustrated in cases one and two above, it was the person harmed who had to hire a lawyer to file a lawsuit to get the fraudulent deed declared by the court to be fraudulent. This hardly seems fair but that’s the way the system works. Once the court case is filed, if the facts are like case one above (the stranger drafting a completely fictitious conveyance), the case should be resolved quickly since it’s unlikely that the wrong doer will show up to defend against the claim. On the other hand, a case like number two above which involves an interfamily dispute may require a full trial and would therefore take longer to resolve.

In either case, the legal fees incurred by the innocent property owner would be substantial. Including a claim for money damages in the lawsuit or seeking restitution in a criminal prosecution look good on paper, but both of those would take time to adjudicate and, more importantly, wrongdoers usually don’t have assets to pay such judgments.

Something that might help the innocent property owner is title insurance. When you buy real estate and finance your purchase with a mortgage, your lender requires you to obtain title insurance. For a one-time payment, title insurance protects against financial loss resulting from defects in a property’s legal title. Almost everyone who has bought or refinanced a home purchased title insurance at the closing, although amidst the avalanche of documents that are signed at the closing, few realize title insurance is included. Critically, there are two types of title insurance policies. The mandatory one, a lender’s policy, covers the mortgage lender to the amount of the loan. The second one, which is optional, is the owner’s policy which covers the equity in the property. Since it’s optional, buyers might be tempted to forgo it given all the other closing costs, but you should always opt for an owner’s policy of title insurance.

However, whether title insurance would pay a lawyer to represent you in a case of deed fraud that arises after you have become the owner of the property depends on the fine print of the title insurance policy. Some cover it; some do not.

Legislators interested in this issue should explore making coverage of title theft defense and loss mandatory for all Massachusetts title insurance policies even if that increases their cost. (However, because title theft continues to be so rare, it is unlikely to gain any legislative momentum since other public policy issues have higher priority.)

Regardless of who pays for a lawyer, receiving early warning of title theft is critical. The best way to get that is by signing up for the free Consumer Notification Service offered by the Massachusetts Secretary of State. Once you create a free account, you enter information about your property. Then, anytime a new document that affects that property is recorded at the registry of deeds, you get an automated email about the new document so you can check it out. This system doesn’t prevent a fraudulent document from being recorded but it does give you immediate warning of it.

One thing to keep in mind when it comes to recording documents at the registry of deeds; real estate ownership and finance is a huge part of the U.S. and global economies. In that context, the speed with which transactions can be processed and recorded is critical to the smooth operation of that system. While you could create a document recording system that reduced the changes of fraud – say, by requiring all sellers to personally appear at the registry to sign their deed – the entire real estate system would grind to a halt and chaos would ensue. I do think technology can provide greater safeguards, but the scale of the problem must be big enough to warrant the investment. However, because title theft continues to be so rare, that’s unlikely to happen.

Finally, regarding the Sun editorial, the omission was that a forged deed does not convey title, something I covered above. The misstatement of law dealt with something called a “quitclaim” deed. The editorial asserted that quitclaim deeds are “not usually used for traditional home sales” since they do not carry the same protections as other forms of deeds. That may be the case elsewhere, but in Massachusetts a quitclaim deed is the standard type of deed used in nearly all conveyances, and it carries all needed protection. (What is called a quitclaim deed elsewhere is a deed of release in Massachusetts.) I mention this in case anyone reading the editorial panicked when they saw they had a quitclaim deed since that is exactly what everyone who owns a home in Massachusetts has.

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This week in my Seen and Heard column, I mentioned a NYT business column that urged caution in putting too many assets in the stock market which may be dangerously inflated due to AI investments; commented on another NYT article about the US granting Saudia Arabia access to nuclear technology; highlighted a profile of an artist who is “helping Trump reshape Washington;” recommended a recent Bob Sullivan Substack column about him interviewing Tony Bennett and Allen Ginsberg on consecutive nights; and the unstated Lowell connections in a Boston Globe article about Mount Auburn Cemetery.