A warranty deed carries six covenants of title: seisin, right to convey, against encumbrances, quiet enjoyment, warranty, and further assurances. The first three are present covenants, breached the instant the deed is delivered if they turn out to be false. The last three are future covenants, dormant until someone with a superior claim actually disrupts your ownership. That split decides who can sue, when the lawsuit clock starts, and whether a later owner inherits any protection at all.
The Three Present Covenants
Present covenants describe the state of the title at the moment the seller hands you the deed. If any of them is false, the breach happens right then, even if you don’t discover it for years.
Seisin
Seisin is the seller’s promise that they actually own the property described in the deed.1St. John’s Law Review. The Covenant of Seisin If they don’t hold legal title, this covenant fails at delivery. Every other promise in the deed rests on this one.
Right to Convey
Right to convey is a separate promise that the seller has legal authority to transfer the property. Ownership and authority are not the same thing. A corporate officer may hold title but lack board approval to sell. A property owner under a court restriction or guardianship may legally own the land but have no power to transfer it. This covenant catches those gaps.
Against Encumbrances
The covenant against encumbrances promises the property is free of liens, mortgages, unpaid taxes, easements, and other burdens that were not disclosed in the deed. Outstanding mortgages, unpaid tax assessments, easements that reduce value, code-enforcement liens, and unexpired leases you didn’t know about all violate this covenant. Visible easements like a utility pole on the lot, and standard ongoing property taxes, generally do not, because you are presumed to have noticed or expected them. Anything the deed lists as a permitted exception is carved out and does not count as a breach.
The Three Future Covenants
Future covenants sit dormant. They do nothing at closing and only come alive when a third party with a superior legal claim interferes with your ownership.
Quiet Enjoyment
Quiet enjoyment guarantees that you can possess and use the property without being displaced by someone with a better claim. “Quiet” here means undisturbed; it has nothing to do with noise. A latent defect in the chain of title is not enough on its own. Something has to happen: you are physically removed, or a court rules that another party’s superior right effectively strips you of the ability to use or control the land.
Warranty
The covenant of warranty is the seller’s promise to defend your title against any lawful claim brought by a third party.2Texas Real Estate Research Center. Seller Beware: Understanding the General Warranty Deed If someone sues claiming superior ownership, the seller must either mount the defense or compensate you for what you lose. This is the covenant with the sharpest teeth, because it turns every title defect from the property’s entire history into the seller’s personal liability.
Further Assurances
Further assurances requires the seller to take reasonable steps after closing to fix title problems. In practice that means signing a corrective deed to fix a legal description, executing a boundary agreement to resolve a survey conflict, or providing an affidavit to close a gap in the recorded chain. The usual remedy is a court order compelling the seller to sign, not a money judgment. Many title problems are administrative, and forcing you to litigate over a misspelled name or missing acknowledgment when a signature would solve it makes no sense.
Why the Present-Future Split Matters
The classification controls three things that shape your real-world options.
Who can sue. Under traditional common law, present covenants are personal to the original buyer and do not run with the land. If you sell the property and the next owner later discovers a seisin problem, that owner has no claim against the original seller on the three present covenants. Future covenants travel with the property. A buyer three transfers down the chain can still reach back to the original seller when a superior claim eventually surfaces.
When the clock starts. Because present covenants are breached at delivery, the statute of limitations begins running at closing, even if you have no idea anything is wrong.1St. John’s Law Review. The Covenant of Seisin A buyer who learns about a defect a decade later may find the claim already time-barred. Future covenants don’t start the clock until an actual disturbance happens, which could be decades after the sale.
What you have to prove. A present covenant claim requires showing the seller’s promise was false when the deed was delivered. A future covenant claim requires showing that someone actually interfered with your ownership because of a defect that existed at delivery. Simply discovering a title problem is not enough to trigger a future covenant. Something concrete has to happen to your possession or use of the property.
What the Exceptions List Can Quietly Remove
Every warranty deed lists exceptions: specific encumbrances the seller is not promising to defend against. These carve-outs do not violate the covenant against encumbrances because you are put on notice before closing. Typical permitted exceptions include current-year property taxes not yet due, recorded utility and access easements, neighborhood restrictive covenants such as HOA rules, and previously severed mineral rights.
This is where careful reading pays off. The six covenants sound comprehensive, but a long exceptions list can gut them. A deed that carves out fifteen items may look protective while leaving you exposed to most of the realistic title risks on the property. Read the exceptions before closing, not after. Anything the seller wants excluded from the warranty should be something you are willing to live with.
The Deed Type Changes What You Get
The six covenants come with a general warranty deed, which is the strongest form. A general warranty deed means the seller stands behind the property’s entire ownership history, not only the years they held title. A defect that originated fifty years ago with a prior owner is still the current seller’s problem.
A special warranty deed (sometimes called a limited warranty deed) narrows that exposure. The seller guarantees only that no title problems arose during their own ownership. Anything predating their acquisition is your problem. Commercial transactions and bank-owned sales frequently use special warranty deeds, so plan accordingly if you see one.
A quitclaim deed makes no promises at all. It transfers whatever interest the seller happens to have, if any, without any covenant about the title’s condition. Quitclaim deeds are common between family members, divorcing spouses, or parties clearing up minor title issues, but they should not be the primary deed in an arm’s-length purchase. Accept one and you have no covenant-based claim against the seller if the title turns out to be worthless.
What You Can Actually Recover
Damages for a broken title covenant are measured by the original purchase price, not the property’s current market value. If you lose the entire property to someone with a superior title, the maximum recovery is what you paid, plus interest from the date of conveyance to the date of trial, plus costs incurred defending the title.3Denver Law Review. Measure of Damages for the Breach of the Covenants of Quiet Enjoyment and Warranty Lose only a portion, like a strip of land to a neighbor’s boundary claim, and the recovery is proportional to the value of that portion.
Courts do not allow you to recover the appreciated value of the property, even if the land has doubled in worth since the sale.3Denver Law Review. Measure of Damages for the Breach of the Covenants of Quiet Enjoyment and Warranty The same ceiling applies to a remote grantee who bought further down the chain: recovery is limited to the lesser of what they paid and what the original seller received.
Attorney fees are often recoverable when you have to defend title against a third-party claim, but with a catch. Most courts require you to notify the seller of the challenge and give them a chance to step in and handle the defense. Hire a lawyer and fight the case without telling the seller, and you may forfeit the right to recover those legal costs. The seller’s covenant of warranty includes a right to defend, and skipping that step can sink your later reimbursement claim.
Why Title Insurance Usually Sits Alongside the Covenants
Warranty covenants and title insurance protect against the same risk in very different ways, and relying on the covenants alone is a gamble most real estate attorneys would advise against.
The practical problem is enforcement. If a defect surfaces, your remedy is to sue the seller. That assumes the seller is still alive, findable, and solvent enough to pay a judgment. A seller who conveyed the property twenty years ago may be deceased, bankrupt, or impossible to locate. The covenant exists on paper; collecting on it can be worthless.2Texas Real Estate Research Center. Seller Beware: Understanding the General Warranty Deed
Title insurance removes that collection risk. You pay a one-time premium at closing, and the insurer takes on the obligation to pay covered losses and defend your title if a claim arises. Owner’s policies typically cost a fraction of a percent of the purchase price, often around 0.5% or less, and remain in effect as long as you or your heirs have an interest in the property. The insurer also examines the public record before issuing the policy, so many defects get caught and corrected before you ever take ownership. The covenants only matter after something goes wrong.
The two protections work together. Title insurance policies have their own exceptions and exclusions, and the deed covenants provide a secondary layer for anything the policy does not cover.