Mass. Gen. Laws » Part III Title III Chapter 240
Massachusetts General Laws

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 240, § 2 (2026)

Proceedings upon petition

✓ current as of July 2026
Find cases: SyfertCases citing this section MAmalegislature.gov (official) JustiaChapter on Justia CornellLII Search CasesGoogle Scholar

Section 2. If the petition is not so served, the court shall order notice thereof by publication to the supposed claimants, whether residents or non-residents of the commonwealth. Such notice shall bind all the world, but the court may also require personal or other notice, and if, upon return of the order of notice duly executed, the parties notified do not appear within the time limited or, having appeared, disobey the lawful order of the court to try their claim, the court shall enter a decree that they be forever barred from having or enforcing any such claim adversely to the petitioner, his heirs or assigns, in the land described, and may require them to execute, within such time as the court orders, a conveyance, release or acquittance duly relinquishing the same. A judgment or decree under this section may require the giving of a bond to respond to any action brought under section four within five years after the entry of such judgment or decree.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 2 cases, 2011–2015 · leading case: Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez, 955 N.E.2d 884 (Mass. 2011).
Sort: Relevance Newest Treatment
Bevilacqua v. Rodriguez, 955 N.E.2d 884 (Mass. 2011). · cites it 2× “” G. L. c. 240, § 2. As a result, a property owner whose whereabouts are unknown and who is not reached through publication notice might be divested by a plaintiff who is put to no greater evidentiary test than having pleaded facts that the court is obliged to accept as true.”
Abate v. Fremont Inv. & Loan, 26 N.E.3d 695 (Mass. 2015). “, quoting G. L. c. 240, § 2. We recognized, on the other hand, that requiring the petitioner to prove all jurisdictional facts by a preponderance of the evidence standard might result in the two steps of a try title petition being collapsed into one.”
Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.