Allodial Title

[coirecfox]

Has anyone here ever heard of allodial title? I was listening to Michael Badnarik's Consitution class and her started talking about it. I have never heard of it before. Some detailed information would be very helpful.

[BurgessLau]

The place to start with such questions is with your unabridged dictionary. If you don't have one, you should seriously consider buying one.

An allod (also spelled alod) is a freehold, that is, a piece of property, such as a farm, owned ("held") by an owner who has no obligations to anyone else for that property. In other words, he doesn't pay rent on it; nor, in the Middle Ages in Europe, would he have owed any service (for example, as a warrior) to a higher lord in the feudal hierarchy in exchange for receiving the property.

(See or example Marc Bloc, Land and Work in Medieval Europe for some discussion; I am sure other, later works have even more information, not only for France, but elsewhere in Europe.)

An allodial title, then, might be the "title" (right) to a particular piece of property, owned free and clear of other obligations.

Today I suppose, in theory, most property owners in Western Civilization are freeholders (if you ignore the "obligation" to pay taxes on the property).

I do not know how this fits -- if it does -- into the constitutional context you mentioned. I suspect that Thomas Jefferson would have seen allods as the backbone of a free republic. They would not have been beholden, so to speak, to anyone but themselves.

[Bryan]

I spent the past summer working for an oil and gas company, primarily in the "land" department dealing with oil and gas leases. Quite frequently, the owners of the surface rights and the owner of the mineral rights (> 200 ft below the surface) for a particular piece of land were different.

I suspect in order to have allodial title to a piece of land you would have to own the surface and mineral rights. Is it as simple as that, or is there something more to allodial title?

[coirecfox]

The way I understand allodial title right now is that, if I have the title, I don't own land, I merely possess it. A title is what gives you the right to develop the land: it does not give you ownership of the land. Whereas if I had an allodial title to it, I would own it free and clear. I think this is how the Government gets away with the principle(ha) of Imminent Domain, where they claim that taking "your" property is in the name of the public welfare. I quote your because if allodial title is what i think it is, its not really yours, you're just using it--you merely possess the land. Does this sound familiar to anyone. And Burgess, your skill with a dictionary is unmatched, but I was looking for in depth information, like examples and legal justifications.