Real Property Ownership, Interests, and Descriptions
Estates and interests
Ownership is a bundle of rights: surface, subsurface, air, and water. Freehold estates are fee simple absolute (the fullest), fee simple defeasible (determinable or subject to a condition subsequent, where a condition can end it), and life estates (conventional or pur autre vie, with remainder or reversion). Leasehold estates are personal property interests: estate for years, periodic tenancy, tenancy at will, and tenancy at sufferance.
Encumbrances affect title without transferring ownership: liens (mortgages, tax liens, judgments) and nonmonetary encumbrances (easements, deed restrictions, encroachments). Easements may be appurtenant (benefits and runs with the land) or in gross (personal), and created by express grant, implication, necessity, or prescription. Liens generally rank by recording date.
Co-ownership and fixtures
Tenancy in common (unequal shares, no survivorship), joint tenancy (equal shares, right of survivorship, four unities), and community property between spouses. A fixture is personal property that has become realty; test it with MARIA: method of attachment, adaptability, relationship of the parties, intention, and agreement.
Legal descriptions
Metes and bounds (monuments and bearings), lot and block from a recorded plat, and the government survey (principal meridian and baseline; a township is 36 sections; a section is 640 acres; a quarter-section is 160 acres). Utah follows prior appropriation for water: first in time, first in right, limited to beneficial use.
Traps: an easement appurtenant is not extinguished by selling the dominant parcel; a deed conveying only the grantor's right, title, and interest may convey nothing; acreage questions reduce to section math.
Worked example: the NW 1/4 of the SE 1/4 of a section equals 1/4 x 1/4 x 640 = 40 acres.