Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7908 – Nature of rights; subordination of interests
(a) The interest of a holder is an interest in real property. The rights of the Department under this subchapter or under an approved environmental covenant, other than as a holder, are not interests in real property.
Terms Used In Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7908
- Common interest community: means a condominium or other real property with respect to which a person, by virtue of the person's ownership of a parcel of real property, is obligated to pay for property taxes, insurance premiums, maintenance, or improvement of other real property described in a recorded covenant that creates the common interest community. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Department: means the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC). See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Environmental covenant: means a servitude arising under an environmental response project that imposes activity and use limitations. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Holder: means a person that is the grantee of an environmental covenant. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Obligation: An order placed, contract awarded, service received, or similar transaction during a given period that will require payments during the same or a future period.
- Owner: means a person that owns a fee simple interest in real property that is subject to an environmental covenant. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Person: means any individual, trust, firm, joint stock company, federal agency, partnership, corporation (including a government corporation or authority), limited liability company, association, state, municipality, commission, political subdivision of a state or any interstate body. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
- Real property: Land, and all immovable fixtures erected on, growing on, or affixed to the land.
- real property: is synonymous with the phrase "lands, tenements and hereditaments. See Delaware Code Title 1 Sec. 302
- Record: when used as a noun, means information that is inscribed on a tangible medium or that is stored in an electronic or other medium and is retrievable in perceivable form. See Delaware Code Title 7 Sec. 7907
(b) The Department is bound by the obligations it assumes in an environmental covenant, but the Department does not assume obligations merely by approving an environmental covenant.
(c) The following rules apply to interests in real property in existence at the time an environmental covenant is created or amended:
(1) A prior interest is not affected by an environmental covenant unless the owner of the interest is a party to the covenant or subordinates its interest to the covenant.
(2) This act does not require an owner of a prior interest to subordinate that interest to an environmental covenant or to agree to be bound by the covenant.
(3) A subordination agreement may be contained in an environmental covenant covering real property or in a separate record or, if the environmental covenant covers commonly owned property in a common interest community, in a record signed by any person authorized by the governing board of the owners’ association.
(4) An agreement by a person to subordinate a prior interest to an environmental covenant affects the priority of that person’s interest but does not by itself impose any affirmative obligation on the person with respect to the environmental covenant.