01-Mar-2007

The Tennessee Court of Appeals held in Williams v. Title Guaranty & Trust Co.,
212 S.W. 2d 897, 901 that notice of a prior contract that interest will be effective to charge a subsequent purchaser with knowledge of its existence may be either direct information of the prior contract right (the parties actually telling you that there is another contract on the property), or may consist of information or facts from which actual knowledge may be inferred; the notice does not have to be actual..If you have received enough information for which a reasonable person would have knowledge, that is likely enough information to put one on notice. It does not need to have complete information of every fact or detail for the purchaser to know.

Other types of notice are actual notice and constructive notice. Actual notice may be where the parties actually told you that there is another contract on the property or you knew by some other means .Constructive notice is where there is a document of record at the appropriate Register of Deeds office.