How to structure a document review when a deed involves more than two parties

Most pre-completion checks are straightforward when there are just two parties — seller and buyer, borrower and lender. The review has a clear shape: confirm each party's identity, cross-check the details in the engrossment, flag anything that does not match. But many transactions involve more than two parties. A transfer of land with several sellers who inherited a property together. A deed of assignment with multiple assignors. A contract signed by a company director, a personal guarantor, and a second signatory. As the number of parties grows, so does the risk that one of them passes through the review unchecked.

This article sets out how to structure that review so every party is confirmed, regardless of how many there are.

Why adding parties compounds the risk

A two-party check has one relationship to verify: does the person named in the deed match the person presenting the ID? Add a third party and you have three checks. Add a fourth and you have six. That is before accounting for cross-references between parties — confirming, for example, that the attorney who signed a power of attorney is the same person named in the deed, or that a company's authorised signatory is consistent across the contract and the board resolution.

The error that shows up in multi-party matters is not usually a poor check. It is a missing one. Under the weight of a long file, one party gets left for later. Later does not come before completion.

The principle: one row per party, one column per document

Before opening the engrossment, it helps to build a grid — in your head or on paper in the matter file — with one row for each party and one column for each document type you need to verify for that person.

Typical columns:

• Identity document (passport, driving licence, or national ID)
• The deed or contract itself
• Power of attorney or board resolution, if they are acting on behalf of someone else

If there are five sellers, there are five rows. Each row is worked independently. A completed row means a confirmed party. The file is clear when every row is done.

This sounds obvious. In practice, what usually happens is that the engrossment is read from start to finish and details are checked as they appear. That approach leads to jumping between parties, losing the thread, and finishing with a feeling that everything was reviewed — without the certainty that it was.

Identify every party before checking a single document

The first step in any multi-party review is not opening anyone's passport. It is reading the parties section of the deed to produce a complete list of everyone named, their capacity (principal, attorney, authorised signatory, guarantor), and — if they are acting on behalf of someone else — who that is.

Once that list exists, you can determine what documents you need for each person. A party acting in their own right needs only their identity document. A party acting under a power of attorney needs their identity document plus the power itself. A company director signing on behalf of a company needs their identity document plus evidence of authority — a board resolution, a certificate of appointment, or similar.

If the parties section reveals a name you have no document for, that is the moment to pause and request it — not when the matter is ready to complete.

Work party by party, not document by document

Once the list is complete and the documents are assembled, the review proceeds one party at a time, not one document type at a time.

That means: take the first name on the list, review all of their documents, record any discrepancies, then move to the next. Do not review all the passports first and then re-read the deed — that forces two passes through the deed and increases the chance of mismatching details between parties.

For each party, confirm:

1. The name in the deed matches the name on the identity document, including middle names and initials where they appear
2. Any identity document number referenced in the deed matches the document itself
3. The identity document is in date
4. If they are acting under a power of attorney or board authority, that the authority covers this type of transaction and has not lapsed

Handle referenced parties as carefully as signing parties

Some deeds mention people who do not sign — a spouse whose consent is noted, a previous registered proprietor whose title number is cited. Those references still need checking if they are based on documents in the file.

The working rule: any number that appears in the deed — a passport number, a title number, a company registration number — should match the document it came from. If no document supports a number that matters to the transaction, that is a discrepancy to flag before completion, not something to carry through to exchange.

Record the status of each party's review in the matter file

In a multi-party matter, the file should show which parties have been confirmed and which have outstanding issues. A short note per party — confirmed, no issues or outstanding: authority document not received — makes the review auditable and means any fee earner who picks up the file can continue without repeating work.

This matters especially when the review is split across a team. If two people work on different parties without recording what they have done, the risk of duplicating effort — or leaving gaps — is real.

The margin for error does not scale with the party count

One unchecked party in a two-party transaction is half the file. In an eight-party transaction, it is twelve and a half per cent. The legal exposure is the same either way: the matter completed with a problem that the pre-completion review should have caught.

A clear method — a party list, one row per name, work in sequence — does not slow the review down. It makes it defensible, and it makes it easier to hand off when the work is shared across a team.

If you'd like support with document review and verification in your practice, VerifyAct has tools built for that.