Help with house title of a fully paid property

[Peter N.]

Hi Everyone,

In short, may I ask for advice on how to get title cleared from county records?

Long of it. The house is fully paid more than a decade ago. The mortgage company filed the necessary form to the county at that time. However, there’s was a mistake in the form. The county then asked them to clear up the mistake. I was informed by the county as well. But because I was dumb I assumed the mortgage company will take care of it. Recently, I realized that I totally forgotten that I still don’t have the title in my possession. So I went to the county website to request for it, it was then that I realized I still have the mortgage company on record. So then I contacted the mortgage company. Very unfortunately, they no longer have a record of my mortgage. They don’t see that I owe them and they don’t see I don’t owe them and they don’t see any records of me at all. Their explanation was that the company then was bought by the company now. And they said they cannot help me.

So now I’m not sure what’s the next step.

Thank you I’m advance for any input.

[Peter Walther]

My suggestion is that you contact a good NY real estate attorney for advice.

In my opinion the Clerk of the Court will not assist you in obtaining a release from the lender.  The Clerk's sole role in this matter is to place any document in the public record that is in recordable form and does not know or care if the information on it is correct or not.  The Clerk will not attempt to or assist in trying to track down a release.

The attorney can send a demand letter to the "lender" and demand a corrected release.  Now it may be a problem if the "lender" you contacted only purchased the assets of the original lender since apparently at the time they purchased the assets your debt was paid off.  Therefore, the new "lender" may not have an obligation to provide a satisfaction for a mortgage they didn't purchase.

On the good side, if you can't get a corrected release, your attorney might be able to file a declaratory judgment action to 1. reform the recorded release to correct the error or 2. since I believe NY has a 6 year statute of limitation on mortgage foreclosure and since you wrote it's been more than ten years since you paid off the debt, it's possible the Court would rule the mortgage is no longer enforceable and thereby nullify it as a lien on the property.

I don't know what you're trying to accomplish that brought the error to your attention but if the problem is with a title company refusing to insure title without exception for the mortgage, depending on the error it may be possible to convince them to overlook the error if it's plain on its face.  For example, if your mortgage is recorded in Book 123, Page 456 but the release purports to release a mortgage at Book 124, Page 456 and the instrument at that Book and Page is a restriction encumbering a different property, logic would dictate what mortgage the release was intended to affect.

This is not legal advice, just my opinion and I hope it helps.