New South Wales Consolidated Acts

REAL PROPERTY ACT 1900 - SECT 38

38 Recording dealings on certificate of title etc

(1) If the Registrar-General, having delivered a certificate of title for land:

(a) requests its production for the purpose of registration of a dealing that relates to the land, and

(b) the request or a requirement under subsection (2) is not complied with,

the Registrar-General may refuse to register the dealing or to accept it for registration.

(2) Where a certificate of title is not produced in response to a request made by the Registrar-General under subsection (1), the Registrar-General may require that the dealing in respect of which the request was made be accompanied by an application in the approved form to dispense with the production of the certificate of title together with such evidence as the Registrar-General requires.

(3) Where the Registrar-General makes a recording in the Register in respect of a dealing, the Registrar-General may also make a like recording upon any certificate of title produced to the Registrar-General for the purpose of registration of the dealing or that otherwise becomes available to the Registrar-General.

(5) Where an instrument that is a certificate of title or duplicate registered dealing is in the custody of the Registrar-General and no person is entitled to require the delivery to himself or herself of the instrument the Registrar-General may:

(a) dispense with the recording of the effect of any dealing upon that instrument, and

(b) subject to the State Records Act 1998 , destroy that instrument without retaining a copy or record thereof.

(6) Subject to the State Records Act 1998 , the Registrar-General may:

(a) destroy any document that the Registrar-General is not under a duty to deliver or issue to any person, whether or not it is part of the Register, or

(b) deliver to a person who, in the Registrar-General’s opinion, intends to preserve it for historical purposes any document that, by paragraph (a), the Registrar-General is empowered to destroy.

(7) The Registrar-General shall, before destroying a document under subsection (6) (a), make a reproducible copy of that document if:

(a) where the document is part of the Register, it evidences a subsisting interest, or

(b) where the document is not part of the Register, the Registrar-General would, but for subsection (6) (a), have a duty to preserve it.

(8) The Registrar-General shall preserve a reproducible copy of any document referred to in subsection (7) (a) or (b) for as long as the interest evidenced by the document subsists or for as long as the Registrar-General would, but for subsection (6) (a), have had a duty to preserve the document, as the case may be.

(9) Where a reproducible copy of a document is preserved under subsection (8) and that document would, if it had not been destroyed under subsection (6) (a), be part of the Register, whether for all purposes or for the purpose only of section 96B, the reproducible copy shall be part of the Register for all purposes or for that purpose, as the case may be.

(10) In this section:
"reproducible copy" means a copy of a document that is captured and retained in a manner that enables the document to be reproduced.