The Evans Law Firm

What is an abstract of title?

There are over two million documents in our local county clerk’s office. Up to 20,000 documents are coming in each month. Somebody has to look through those documents to see if any affect your title. An abstract is a certified document setting out a short description of every document that has been filed that effects your land. Typically people will have a search that goes back seventy or eighty years. All we have to do with them is search the records from the last certification date up to today. Then it’s my job to make sure your title is ready for sale.

Many people with common names will have judgments listed against them, even though they aren’t the judgment debtors. I had a case in NYC where the owner was William Johnson. Can you image how many judgments there were against William, Billie, Bill, Big Bill, Willie or Will Johnson in the NYC clerk’s office? Huge. Of course we supplied an affidavit from the seller denying that he ever had any business with the creditors and never lived at the addresses of the debtors. That’s sufficient to clear the title. But the abstract will always show those things, because the certification of the abstractor is his promise to show anything that might affect the title.

We also deal with your lenders to get official pay-off documents to satisfy mortgages. Don’t pay it off in advance just to help simplify matters unless you are dealing with one of the few local banks like Watertown Savings or Carthage Federal. They can issue a discharge immediately and we can use it at closing. Other banks can take weeks if not months to issue a discharge, and that really can throw a wrench in a closing.

See you soon.