Statutes of Limitation on a Quit Claim Deed in North Carolina
A statute of limitations is a law that limits the amount of time you have to bring a lawsuit on a given claim. Since recording a quitclaim deed is not a lawsuit, North Carolina has no true statute of limitations for doing this act. Although the law appears to technically give you unlimited time to record, however, as a practical matter you may want to record your quitclaim deed as soon as possible.
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The Recording Statute
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Every American state has some way of registering the ownership of and security interests in real property. In North Carolina, deeds and security interests are recorded in the office of the Register of Deeds in the county where the land is located. North Carolina's recording statute, North Carolina General Statutes Section 47-18, technically does not require you to record your quitclaim deed for it to be valid. What it does say, however, is that a recorded interest in land has priority over all subsequently recorded interests. Your unrecorded quitclaim deed would be good against the grantor, but it wouldn't defeat claimants who came later.
Subsequent Deeds
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If you don't record your deed, your grantor could turn around and sell his interest to someone else even though he already conveyed it to you. Land in North Carolina has no fixed title that gets signed over to a buyer at closing. You can't tell from looking at a deed whether the grantor actually still owns the land in question. When land is sold, the closing attorney typically conducts a title search to make sure there aren't any unsatisfied security interests or prior conveyances in the chain of title. If your deed isn't recorded, it won't show up in the title search. The subsequent grantee, if he records before you do, has a superior claim to the land.
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Subsequent Deeds Of Trust
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Another danger of not recording your quitclaim deed as soon as possible is that the grantor could theoretically deed the property to you and then borrow money against his interest even though he has already conveyed it to you. If the lender recorded their deed of trust before you recorded your quitclaim deed, your interest would be subordinate to theirs. If the grantor failed to pay on the loan, the lender could foreclose.
Subsequent Judgments
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A bigger danger to your ownership interest than subsequent deeds of trust is the subsequent judgments against the grantor. In North Carolina, a judgment against a party operates as a lien on all real property owned by the judgment debtor in the county where the judgment is docketed. If you wait to record your quitclaim deed and a judgment gets docketed against the grantor, you still own the land but you own it subject to the judgment lien. A judgment can't attach to land owned by a husband and wife as tenants by the entireties, but it attaches as soon as the parties divorce. Since recording is a very simple act, record your quitclaim deed as soon as you can.
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References
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