n.the act of entering an instrument in a public registry or records officeAm. Jur. 2d, “Records” § 47Both the necessity and the effect of recordation rest solely on statute. The recording of deeds and other instruments affecting the title to land is purely a system of legal institution, and not of common right or abstract justice. At common law in England, there was no system of registration, and the rule between claimants of the same title was found in the maxim “prior in temporare potior est in jure.” At an early date in the country, however, to obviate frauds arising out of secret conveyances, statutes were enacted in the several jurisdictions requiring the registration of conveyances in order to render them valid as against subsequent bona fide purchasers.the act of completing a process that formally transforms an information object into a recordthe state of being a record, especially with the sense of a record’s shifting between fixity and mutability in its physical and social contexts
Notes
In a county clerk’s office, recordation1 (also referred to as recording) is the opposite of filing. When a person records a document in such an office, the clerk makes a copy (usually digital, in the past micrographic, and originally by hand) and the original is returned to the deed holder. Most records in county clerks’ offices are filed. In such situations, the filer gives the record to the clerk, who retains the record.
