Mass. Gen. Laws » Part I Title IX Chapter 59
Massachusetts General Laws

Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 59, § 12F (2026)

Real estate unassessed where right or titled unascertained; lien for expenses to determine ownership

✓ current as of July 2026
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Section 12F. Wherever real estate has been unassessed because the right or title thereto has been doubtful or unascertained because of missing records or otherwise, and a municipality has conducted a search and has determined the record ownership of said real estate, the said real estate shall become subject to a lien for the expenditures incurred by said municipality in the determination of said ownership. The assessor of said municipality shall forthwith cause to be recorded in the registry of deeds for the county or district in which the real estate is located a statement containing the name of the owner or owners of said real estate, an adequate description thereof, and the amount of said expenditures incurred, for which amount a lien on said real estate shall become effective as of the time and date of its recording. No such lien shall be effective against a bona fide purchaser or other transferee without notice of such lien. The recording fee for such statement shall be added to and become a part of the expenditures constituting said lien.

Notes of Decisions
Cited in 1 case, 2014–2014 · leading case: Athanasiou v. Town of Westhampton, 30 F. Supp. 3d 84 (D. Mass. 2014).
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Athanasiou v. Town of Westhampton, 30 F. Supp. 3d 84 (D. Mass. 2014). “” In its letter, the Town also cited Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 59, § 12F and explained that the statute “provides a mechanism for the Assessor to determine the owner of the Parcel, at the expense of the purported property owner.”
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.