Real Property
Real Property tests estates, concurrent ownership, landlord-tenant, deeds, recording, mortgages, easements, and adverse possession under Kentucky law. Recording and title disputes are recurring essay topics.
Estates and concurrent ownership
Kentucky recognizes fee simple absolute, life estates, and future interests. Tenancy in common carries no right of survivorship; joint tenancy requires the four unities and express survivorship language. A tenancy by the entirety is available to married couples and generally cannot be severed unilaterally.
Deeds and recording
A valid deed requires a grantor, grantee, words of grant, description, and delivery. Kentucky is a race-notice recording state under KRS 382.270: a later purchaser prevails only if it records first and takes without notice of the prior conveyance. Notice may be actual, inquiry, or record.
Landlord-tenant
Kentucky implies a covenant of quiet enjoyment and prohibits retaliatory eviction. A landlord must return a security deposit within the statutory period or face liability. Commercial leases are governed largely by the lease terms.
Easements and adverse possession
Easements may be express, implied, or prescriptive. Adverse possession in Kentucky generally requires actual, open, notorious, exclusive, hostile, and continuous possession for the statutory period, generally fifteen years under KRS 413.010.
Worked example
O conveys Blackacre to A, who does not record. O then conveys Blackacre to B, who pays value and records without notice of A. Under Kentucky's race-notice statute, B prevails because B recorded first and lacked notice. If B had actual notice of A, A would prevail despite not recording.
Traps
Calling Kentucky a pure race state; ignoring inquiry notice from possession; assuming joint tenancy is presumed; forgetting that adverse possession requires hostility, not permission.