Understanding the Legality of eSignatures for Affidavit of Service in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Affidavit of Service in United Kingdom

well you're not going to believe this but just before i was all set to do this video on a recent update that the land registry has just made i found a court ruling on electronic signatures when using your emails so i want to share that high court decision with you before ending this video as it is a bit of a surprising outcome so the lan registry has updated their requirements on using digital signatures for deeds i will also discuss the pros and cons of using vendors who provide services for creating digital signatures if you're interested in learning something you may not know then stick around for the next part of the video for those of you who are new to my videos my name is karen cole and i'm from legal minded friends and my aim is to assist individuals or businesses who represent themselves in a legal matter you can read more about me on my website uh which i have left a link below to in the description area so let's get started if you are in a financial negotiations due to separation or divorce you may be selling your property or transferring a jointly owned marital property this will no doubt involve the land registry so in october 2021 the land registry gave an update on their digital road map services as it had been five years since increasing their investment in digital services the aim is for them to move to digital applications online so they are looking to technology to market understanding opportunities for digital signatures and proving identification i have left links below if you want to read documents that they do accept by way of qualified electronic signatures as right now they are extending the pilot scheme sign my mortgage digital service the benefits to digital signing is it will increase speed in processing there will be enhanced security and ultimately this will lower the transaction costs as there will be no need to photocopy or post the online documents have areas which highlight mandatory places where you will need to sign so this in itself presents prevents delays because the form will have exactly where you will need to sign on it the digital signatures will have automatic time stamps so the audit trails will be easier to track the lan registry has updated their requirement process on the 9th of august 2021 the land registry does accept some deeds by electronic signature and it is the conveyancing the conveyancers responsibility for setting up and controlling the signature process so what's the downside if you are a conveyancer using a vendor that provides electronic signatures make sure your documents are not stored on the service provider's memory so that would be a good question to ask them if you have control of that process the other issue to be mindful is that all people involved in the process must agree to the electronic service if you're concerned about fraud then make sure the land registry has your current address if you are no longer living in the property that you own because this is important as the land registry will contact you if there's any activity on the property before ending i promised you i would share a decision by the high court and this is for people who have generated an automatic reply with an electronic signature on their email account this is also known as a footer where your signature goes above your address at the end of an email so a couple of years ago the judge ruled for the claimants who argued that after a phone call confirming with the defendant regarding the terms of a settlement in a land dispute the claimants followed up with an email confirming their terms of the conversation the defendant in this case sent a reply simply writing many thanks they the claimants took this to mean that the terms of the contract were accepted the defendant who is the person who wrote many thanks said it was not accepting the terms of the contract but simply thanking them for the email but because the defendant had a signature they took this to mean it was an official acceptance the judge ruled for the claimants saying that an ordinary person would consider that when a sender stores their name in the signature function on emails they would do so intending to sign every email and now i'm cutting a long story short but to have a signature gave the assurance that it was official so to avoid this make it clear on the email footers that your salutation signature is not intended to stand as a signature or avoid having a signature in the first place there are many electronic signature apps so think twice before using them automatically as you may be unknowingly agreeing to something you didn't mean to agree to now the defendant in this high court case was a solicitor however you can legally do your own transferring of deeds and the land registry does allow you to do so so i think this information is relevant and check out the land registry blog dot gov dot uk where the head of customer policy and services discusses conveyancing solicitor or diy all links are in my description area below and you can read real people's questions and experiences with the land registry so check them out well i hope you enjoyed today's video please like and share as you never know who it will help and if you have a legal worry contact legalminded friends thank you