VPRS 19161 General Law Plans of Subdivision

This series consists of plans of land subdivision under the General Law system of land ownership. The purpose of the records was to show the division of a parcel of General Law land into two or more parcels. The plans were deposited with the Registrar General’s Office (RGO) between 1946 and 1983, by the relevant local municipal council, after approval of an application for subdivision of General Law land. Unlike the subdivisions under the Torrens system, the plans were not approved by the RGO. The significance of this date range is unknown. The plans were deposited at the RGO to support General Law property transactions, as the subdivisions would been given affect in subsequent deeds. References are often made to the plans of subdivision in other records series documenting General Law land ownership. The first land tenure system to be introduced into Victoria in March 1838 was called the 'General Law' or 'Old Law System', or more commonly called today, NUA (Not Under Act). Land under the Torrens system (Real Property Act 1862) was therefore 'under Act'. This system was directly based on the principles of the English Common Law. Under the General Law system, land ownership was based on a set of deeds, being the original deed held by the owner and a Memorial which was generally registered at the RGO. These documents helped prove ownership back to the Crown Grant, although there was no compulsion under this system to register the Memorial with the RGO. Title was proven by producing the collection of deeds, which was commonly called the ‘Chain of Title’ held by successive owners, as well as a search of the Memorials lodged at the RGO. A Memorial is a copy of the original deed. Every time land changed hands, the chain of deeds needed to be produced and a new deed/Memorial needed to be drawn up by lawyers. It was a cumbersome and expensive system, in which the risk of deeds being lost or destroyed was high. Land ownership in the General Law system was and is still not guaranteed by the Victorian Government. Although the expectation was that all land would be brought under the operation of the Transfer of Land Act fairly quickly, this did not prove to be the case. In the mid-1980s, after 120 years of operation of the Torrens system, large areas of land remained under the General Law system. The registration of Memorials continued until the 31 December 1998 when the register was closed. This was an effort to help speed up the Conversion process, as all new land transactions would have to be conducted under the Transfer of Land Act following an application to convert the deed into a certificate of title.