Whatever the equivalent is of your "the authority" in Australia is just a government office that records documents and has nothing to do with title insurance. You (the purchaser) get your title insurance from a private insurer and if it turns out the title is defective, they pay out.
My experience is that title companies a) would not allow this to happen, by accomplishing a legitimate title search and b) they pay out when this happens.
No, thats not how I understand it. the lands registry function is devolved to the states, and the state lands registry office has an industry wide insurance scheme which all real-estate agents and solicitors who do conveyancing pay into so it can pay out, when things go wrong in lands-titles and the titles office has some blame.
In queensland the lands title function was divorced by statute from government and put into an arms-length private company, wholly owned by the various government departments which need the function.
I know that it's sometimes confusing to call compensation from government for stuffups "insurance" but my understanding is that there is some industry levy which is used to top up a pot of money to pay out, when mistakes are made and can be sheeted home to the registry function.
Separately people have to try and manage their own risk, sure. But there is a scheme (as I understand it) which is meant to deal with the corner cases where the registry function blows up.
is the high profile case which has been discussed here. The state government, which is normally expected to be a model litigant, decided to appeal the judgement they had some burden to meet. The basis of the judgement is that some officer of the registry should not have accepted the lifting of the caveat, the sale/transfer and the reapplication of the caveat. At least one of these things shouldn't have been processed.
Yes, but we are talking about Connecticut. There would not be a good reason to analogize to a completely different system on the other side of the planet.
If you are interested in learning more you could research the American Land Title Association.
It varies state by state in Australia, but if we take the largest state, NSW, they operate the Torrens Assurance Fund - Which until recent privatization of the land titles office, was integrated directedly into it. With a fee from each plan and dealing going towards the fund.
"The Torrens Assurance Fund (Fund) is a statutory compensation scheme designed to compensate
people who, through no fault of their own, suffer loss or damage as a result of the operation of the Real
Property Act 1900 (RPA)."
Torens Title is a beautiful system. I can't believe how chaotic land title is is other parts of the world. While NSW does still have some old system land, or chain of deeds style land, it represents less than 1% of the land in the state, and that numbers shrinking every year as its titled out.
My experience is that title companies a) would not allow this to happen, by accomplishing a legitimate title search and b) they pay out when this happens.