What is a title runsheet?

Definition

A title runsheet (or "run sheet") is a chronological schedule of every instrument of record affecting a particular tract of land, from the sovereign grant or a chosen starting point to the present. Each entry identifies the instrument by its recording citation and states who conveyed what to whom.

What each row carries

• Date — instrument date and filing date.
• Grantor and grantee — as written on the instrument, not normalized away.
• Citation — record series, volume and page, or instrument number. Deed Records 244/240 is not Official Public Records 244/240.
• Instrument type — warranty deed, deed of trust, oil and gas lease, release, assignment, probate, affidavit, plat.
• Interest — what fraction or estate was conveyed, reserved or encumbered.
• Remarks — legal description excerpts, acreage, prior references.

Where the rows come from

From the county's index — searched by abstract or survey, and by the parties in the chain — and then from reading the instruments themselves. An index row tells you an instrument exists; only the instrument tells you what it did. A runsheet built from the index alone is a list of citations, not a title examination.

What a gap looks like

The grantee of one deed should appear as the grantor of the next conveyance of that interest. When they do not, there is a gap: an unrecorded conveyance, a probate that was never filed, an heirship not of record, or a name variation. A good runsheet shows the gap. A bad one hides it behind a row that looks plausible.

Checking a runsheet

1. Every citation resolves to an instrument actually located on the index — same book, same numbers.
2. Every row can be traced to the page it was read from.
3. Grantee-to-grantor continuity holds, or the break is stated.
4. Liens and leases have their releases matched, or are listed as unreleased.
5. Interests conveyed out of a tract total no more than what was owned.

How TitleDesk builds one

TitleDesk captures the county index, reads the instruments locally, writes each row with a link to its page and a record of how it was read, flags gaps, and refuses to deliver a runsheet whose citations do not resolve to rows it captured. Title runsheet software.

Bring your assignment, recorded instruments and client format. TitleDesk brings the research, source pages, runsheet, ownership calculations and report package into one workspace, so you can spend more time examining title and serving your clients. Download TitleDesk or talk to Spencer.

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