Frank v. Guarantee Trust & Safe Deposit Co.

Citations

• 216 Pa. 40
• 64 A. 894
• 1906 Pa. LEXIS 559

Syllabus

<p>Ground rents — Merger—Extinguishment—Mortgage—Recording acts— Notice.</p> <p>Where an owner of a ground rent purchases the ground itself and subsequently executes a mortgage without indicating an intention in the mortgage to prevent a merger of the rent in the title to the land, and thereafter executes an assignment of the ground rents to another person, one who takes title under foreclosure of the mortgage takes the fee in the land with the ground rents extinguished, and the assignee of the ground rents takes nothing by his assignment.</p> <p>Ground rent — Merger—Intervening estate — Mortgage—Secret lien — Notice. A ground rent does not merge by the purchase of land out of which it issued by the owner of the rent where there is an intervening estate in, or charge on, the land, held by a third party, a stranger to the title to the fee; but this .does not apply to a secret trust or equity of which a subsequent purchaser has no notice.</p> <p>The fact that the sheriff sells land subject to ground z’ents does not prevent the subsequent merger of the ground rents, where the purchaser is the owner of the ground rents; nor is it notice to a subsequent mortgagee that they were subsisting encumbrances when he took his mortgage.</p> <p>Mitchell, C. J., and Fell, J., dissent.</p>