Comment by pdonis

> is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain

Excuse my German ignorance, but my understanding of how it works here is that unless the transfer is notarized, logged and recorded with the local authority, there has not been a legal transfer. So, by that definition of land ownership, no "events outside of its jurisdiction" can take place. Any such agreements become binding only upon their verified registration. A notary is responsible not only for confirming the transfer but also as independent consultant so neither party gets seriously ripped off. (And if they didn't, they would be in serious liability trouble.)

The "share of the database" is managed and owned by the local government, but its records are available all across Germany for authorities to look up. The vector database of lots is public, and there are procedures to request access to ownership documents for various purposes. The procedure is that when you want to buy a certain property, the owner confirms that you have permission to get the official record directly from the land registry, which then become the basis for any serious negotiations as what is recorded there is in fact the single source of truth.

> First, it doesn't seem like that's always the case, based on another post upthread talking about a land ownership case that went to the high court because of an error in the government's records.

I don’t know what High Court case they are talking about-they didn’t give a citation just a vague recollection-they might be remembering wrong.

But the assumption in the Torrens system is the government database is correct. There are rare exceptions-e.g. the so-called “paramount interests”-but they are narrow and very much exceptional. By contrast, in the US system, a court is totally open to entertaining the argument the county title records are incorrect, in many states there is no presumption against such an argument, and you aren’t required to convince the court some narrowly drawn exception applies before it will consider the argument. (Actually Australia still has something like the “US system” too-we call it “old title”-but old title is extremely rare. Anyone trying to sell an old title lot is going to convert it to Torrens before selling it. I don’t think you can legally sell it until you do so. So in practice the only old title lots left are those which haven’t changed ownership-other than by inheritance-in many decades.)

> Second, since there is no single government for the entire world, any government trying to implement a Torrens system is still going to face the problem of events happening outside its jurisdiction that its records do not and cannot contain, which affect ownership of property in its jurisdiction.

That’s not how it works. Overseas contracts, court judgements, etc - if you don’t lodge them with the land title registry, they don’t legally exist as far as land titles go.

In the Torrens system, if you do not register the transfer of property with the government, then the transfer hasn't happened. So whatever else happens in the rest of the world doesn't matter (at least, unless the land itself is annexed by another government).

(And, from similar cases in the UK which has this system, if the land registry fucks up the transfer is still final and this has been upheld by the court, the government may just be liable for damages)