New South Wales Consolidated Acts

ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TRUST PROPERTY ACT 1936 - SECT 11

11 Protection of purchasers etc

(1) No purchaser, mortgagee, lessee or other person dealing with a body corporate created by this Act or with any person purporting to exercise powers delegated to him under section 9B, and neither the Registrar-General nor the Crown Solicitor nor any other person registering or certifying title shall, upon any sale, exchange, mortgage, lease or other dealing purporting to be made under a power conferred by this Act be concerned to see or inquire into the necessity for or propriety thereof, or the mode of exercising the same, or be affected by notice that the exercise of the power is unauthorised, irregular or improper, and a receipt for any money payable to the body corporate, signed by the Bishop who is a member thereof, shall be a sufficient discharge in favour of, and shall exonerate the person paying such money from all responsibility for the application of such money.

(2) Where--

(a) an instrument purports to exercise a power conferred by this Act, and to pass or create an estate or interest in land described in the instrument as being Church trust property situated in a diocese therein named, and

(b) the land which the instrument purports to pass or affect is not, in fact, under the provisions of the Real Property Act 1900 , and

(c) the instrument is executed in accordance with the requirements of this Act by the body corporate created by this Act for the diocese so named in the instrument, and

(d) the instrument is registered under the provisions of the Registration of Deeds Act 1897 ,

such instrument shall--

(i) in favour of every person claiming any estate or interest under or through the instrument, be conclusive evidence against every body corporate created by this Act claiming any estate or interest against that person, that the land described in the instrument as being Church trust property situated within the diocese named therein was Church trust property so situated at the time of the execution of the instrument, and that the body corporate by which the instrument was executed had at the time of the execution thereof an estate or interest in the land so described sufficient to make the instrument effective to pass or create the estate or interest which the instrument purported to pass or create, and

(ii) in favour of every person claiming any estate or interest under or through the instrument and having taken for value, without notice that the land in which the instrument purports to create an estate or interest was not Church trust property situated within the diocese so named in the instrument or that the body corporate by which the instrument was executed had not an estate or interest sufficient to make the instrument effective to pass or create the estate or interest which the instrument purported to pass or create, and in favour of every person claiming under or through any person having so taken, as against every person claiming under or through an instrument executed before the commencement of this Act or under or through an instrument executed by a body corporate created by this Act, and not in either such case registered under the Registration of Deeds Act 1897 , before the registration under that Act of the instrument by this subsection made evidence, be conclusive evidence that the land described in the instrument so made evidence as being Church trust property situated within the diocese named therein was at the time of the execution of that instrument, so situated, and that at the time of the execution of that instrument the body corporate by which it was executed had an estate or interest in the land so described sufficient to make that instrument effective to pass or create the estate or interest which that instrument purported to pass or create.

(3) Any person, not being a body corporate created by this Act, deprived of any estate or interest in land by any such instrument as is mentioned in subsection (2) may bring and prosecute an action for damages against the body corporate by which the instrument was executed and any judgment recovered by the plaintiff in any such action shall be enforceable by execution against any real or personal property for the time being vested in the defendant body corporate, whether Church trust property or not, and any real or personal property taken by a purchaser on a sale in any such execution shall be free of all trusts affecting the same while vested in the execution debtor, except a trust created by the Crown, and the proceeds of every such sale shall in the hands of the sheriff and of the execution creditor be free of all trusts to which it would be subject in the hands of the execution debtor.