District Judge Neil Hickman looks at the impact of the Land Registration Act 2003 on litigators

Greed may be good, but schadenfreude is more fun.

Last year, Woolf-bitten litigators heard occasional murmurs of protest about part 56 of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998.

Conveyancers were allowed a smile on 13 October 2003 as litigators encountered the Land Registration Act 2002, brought into force on that day.

For some time it has been unnecessary to produce the charge certificate in possession proceedings; an office copy was sufficient.

Now you will not be able to produce a charge certificate even if you wanted to, because they are being abolished.

You will use, not an office copy but an official copy, which will be dated and timed, and printed on watermarked paper.

You will still need to make a Matrimonial Homes Act search, but bear in mind that all the forms have changed with effect from 13 October, so make sure you use the up-to-date version of form MH3.

Charging orders

When you have obtained your interim charging order you used to protect it by a caution against dealings.

No longer, as the caution against dealings goes the way of the Great Auk (though existing cautions remain effective), as does the inhibition.

But the price of the simplification is that those who apply for charging orders will now have to understand what they are doing.

If your charging order charges the legal estate, it will be protected by a notice.

Somewhat surprisingly, provided you accompany your Land Registry form with a certified copy of the charging order, the notice will be called an agreed notice and the form is AN1.

Alternatively, register a unilateral notice instead, using form UN1.

Either way, the need to pop down the road to make a statutory declaration has gone, provided (in the case of form UN1) the form is completed by a conveyancer.

That is one fewer disbursement that you can ask the district judge to add to the fixed costs.

A conveyancer is defined by rule 217 of the Land Registration Rules 2003 to mean a solicitor, licensed conveyancer, or fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives (so legal executives who do debt collection are now officially conveyancers).

If you are seeking a charging order against joint owners in respect of a joint judgment debt, you can ask the court to issue a single order against them both (it needs a specific request because the court's CaseMan software is not programmed to deal with it) though you will still have to pay a fee in respect of each individual.

That order can be protected by a notice.

An agreed notice is perhaps preferable to a unilateral notice because the procedure, similar to the old procedure for warning off cautions, by which a registered owner can require the person registering the notice to show cause why it should not be removed (form UN4) does not apply to agreed notices.

However, many charging orders do not charge the legal estate; they charge the beneficial interest of one of the joint owners.

These are protected by registering a restriction using form RX1.

You need to be clear which is which, because under section 42(2) of the Act you cannot protect by a restriction something which you could have protected using a notice.

Using the wrong form could result in a delay while the Land Registry sends the papers back and asks you to get it right.

This will surely happen in the case where the debtor sells just after the interim order was made and just before you managed to protect it at the Land Registry.

Form RX1 requires you to set out the form of restriction which you require.

Standard forms of wording appear in schedule 4 to the rules.

The relevant form of words is in form K: 'No disposition of the registered estate is to be registered without a certificate signed by the applicant for registration or his conveyancer that written notice of the disposition was given to [chargee] at [address for service], being the person with the benefit of [an interim][a final] charging order on the beneficial interest of [judgment debtor] made by the [court] on [date][court reference]'.

It is worth using the standard forms of words if you can.

Although generally the rules do not increase the fees, the fee for registering a restriction in a form not contained in schedule 4 is 80 per title instead of the usual 40.

Just as the final charging order did not need a second caution to protect it, so one notice should suffice.

However, the wording of form K seems to require a final order in respect of a beneficial interest to be separately registered.

It is difficult to believe that this was deliberate.

The notice regime should make creditors more secure.

A caution against dealings did not give the cautioner any priority but simply entitled him to notice of an application to register dealings with the land.

A notice confers priority on the interest which it protects.

Injunctions and freezing orders are protected by registering a restriction.

Standard forms of restriction appear in schedule 4 for registering a freezing order (standard form AA) and an application for a freezing order (standard form CC).

Squatters

From 13 October 2003, a squatter on registered land will no longer be able to keep his head down for 12 years and hope.

Unless he has already completed 12 years' adverse possession by 13 October, in which case he seeks registration of his title using form AP1, he must apply to the registrar on form ADV1 after he has clocked ten years' adverse possession.

He must complete a detailed statutory declaration in support of his application.

This will be notified to the registered proprietor, among others.

A notice of objection must then be lodged with the Land Registry within 65 business days otherwise the squatter will be registered as the proprietor.

Successfully objecting to the squatter's application is not the end of the matter.

The owner must then take proceedings or regularise the position (for instance by granting a lease to the squatter) within the next two years, or the squatter can lodge a fresh ADV1 and this time he will secure the legal estate.

All the Land Registry forms can be found at: www.landreg.gov.uk and can be completed on screen and printed out.

There are also fact sheets and practice guides that can be downloaded and printed.

District Judge Neil Hickman sits at Milton Keynes County Court