Executor Index Cards to General Law Deeds

This series consists of index cards which document the deceased owner of a parcel of land, the executor of their estate, and usually the application conversion number to convert the land from General Law to the Torrens system.

These index cards are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the deceased. They provide the name of the executor of their estate, and commonly the date of death, address, and five-digit application conversion number (AP number) that is used to register conversions of General Law deeds to certificates of title. This provides another means of access to series that are arranged by AP number, such as VPRS 460 Applications for Certificate of Title, VPRS 18870 Application Search Notes, VPRS 19093 Application Examiner’s Notes. Searching General Law records is often based on name searching, so these index cards can provide researchers extra information to assist in searching these records.

The exact date range of this series is not known, though as it was associated with title conversion activity it is assumed that it was created and used contemporaneously with the establishment of the Torrens system and phasing out of the General Law system (1862 - 1998).

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.

The introduction of the Torrens system in Victoria on 2 October 1862, made legislative provisions under the Transfer of Land Act for owners of General Law land to voluntarily convert their land to the Torrens system of land ownership. 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. Most marketable parcels of land under the General law ownership have now been converted to the Torrens system.