CHAPTER 146

An Act to amend and reenact § 17-79, as amended, of the Code of Virginia,
relating to indexes in clerks’ offices.
(H 443]

Approved March 2, 1960

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. That § 17-79, as amended, of the Code of Virginia, be amended and
reenacted as follows:

§ 17-79. (1) There shall be kept in every clerk’s office modern, family
name or ledgerized alphabetical key-table general indexes to all deed books,
miscellaneous liens, will books, judgment dockets and court order books.
The clerk shall enter therein daily with pen and ink or typewriter all
instruments admitted to record, indexing each instrument in the names
of all parties appearing therein who are thereby shown to be affected by
the instrument.

(2) A deed made to one or more trustees to secure * the payment of an
indebtedness shall be sufficiently indexed if the clerk shall enter in the
appropriate places in the general index to deeds provided for in para-
graph (1) the names of the grantor and the name of the beneficiary *
or, in leu of the name of the beneficiary, the first listed trustee as grantee.

(3) A deed made by a person in a representative capacity, or by
devisees or coparceners, shall be indexed in the names of the parties
and the name of the former record title owner, shown by the instrument.

(4) The general indexes of law and chancery causes shall be suffi-
ciently kept if the clerk shall index such causes under the short style or
title thereof, except that in multiple suits brought under § 58-1107, the
names of all of the defendants disclosed by the pleadings shall be entered
in said general index book.

(5) Every deed of conveyance of real estate in which a vendor’s
lien is reserved shall be double indexed so as to show not only the con-
veyance from the grantor to the grantee in the instrument, but also the
reservation of the lien as if it were a grant of the same from the grantee
to the grantor by a separate instrument and the fact of the lien shall be
noted in the index.

(6) All deed books, miscellaneous liens, will books, judgment dockets
and court order books shall be numbered or otherwise adequately desig-
nated and the clerk upon the delivery of any writing to him for record
required by law to be recorded shall duly index it upon the general index
in the manner hereinbefore required and when the writing has been
actually transcribed on the book shall add to the general index the number
of the book in which, and the page on which, the writing is recorded.

(7) The clerk on receipt of any such writing for record may imme-
diately index it in a book to be known as the “daily index of instruments
admitted to record” and within ninety days after its admission to record
the clerk shall index all such writings indexed in the daily index in the
appropriate general index as hereinbefore provided. The daily index book
shall, at all times, be kept in the office of the clerk and conveniently
available for examination by the public. During the period permitted for
transfer from the daily index to the general index, indexing in the daily
index shall be a sufficient compliance with the requirements of this section
as to indexing.

(8) The judge of any court of record in term or in vacation may
make such order or orders as he may deem advisable as to the time and
method of indexing the order books in the clerk’s office of the court and
may dispense with a general index for order books of the court.