§ 9-13-178.When title deeds prior to purchase must be proved

Proving a full chain of title back through a defendant’s own predecessors can be a heavy burden, and a judicial-sale purchaser usually only needs to show that the interest the defendant held passed properly to the purchaser — not police the defendant’s own paper trail before that. This section states that relief directly: in any controversy in a Georgia court, the purchaser is not required to show title deeds prior to the purchase.

That relief has one exception built in. It disappears when it becomes necessary to the purchaser’s own case to show good title in the person whose interest the purchaser bought. If the purchaser’s claim in the controversy turns on establishing that the defendant held good title to what was sold, the purchaser bears the same burden anyone else asserting good title would carry.

Read together with Code Section 9-13-177, this section shows how limited a judicial-sale purchaser’s proof burden ordinarily is: the purchaser inherits the benefit of earlier warranty covenants without first having to prove up the whole chain of title behind them, except in the narrow situation where the purchaser’s own case requires it.