Getting a title/deed corrected

[Kristin Reh]

In 2005 we did a refinance with our 1st mortgage company to lower our interest rate at their suggestion. It was one of those no doc refi's where they sent a notary to our home after 7 weeks of preparing the paperwork. Fast forward to now and we find out they did not properly record the title/deed with our county. We paid for title insurance, title recording fees, and sub recording fees, but they did not get the subordinate paperwork to show that our equity loan remained the 2nd mortgage on our home. The information was in our closing package, but they only recorded 18 pages of the approximately 25 pages with our county. Of course both loans have been bought and sold in the 5-1/2 years since, but Wells Fargo who currently owns what should be our first mortgage has a statement on their website stating that if title insurance was purchased at closing errors will be corrected as soon as they are found.

I sent them a huge package showing all the details where the errors occurred and information to have the title/deed corrected. I am wondering what our chances are of actually getting Wells Fargo to correct the title/deed that Washington Mutual did not file correctly in 2005 when they owned the mortgage? Has anyone else had any luck with getting a situation like this fixed?

[Jon Holdman]

Does your paperwork show the title company that did the work on the refi? Your best bet would be to contact them and ask them to correct it.

The deed for your property is unaffected by all of this, unless you explicitly changed something on that when you did the refi. Normally you would not, but if there had been a marrige, divorce, or name change, you might have taken the opportunity to fix that at the same time. But typically the deed is unaffected during a refi.

Only the deeds of trust (or mortgage, depending on your state) change. Even though "deed" and "deed of trust" contain the same word, they are not the same document. The deed of trust is a security instrument given by you the borrower to the lender. It grants the lender a security interest in your property.

It sounds like when you refinanced that you had both a first and a HELOC. You refinanced the first but not the HELOC. Were these held by the same lender? Was the holder of the HELOC involved in the refi? If so, did they agree to subordinate the HELOC to the new loan? I would have expected the new lender on the first would have insisted on this, but I would also not be surprised if the holder of the HELOC refused. If the holder of the HELOC wasn't involved, they didn't agree, and are now in first position.

Not all paperwork in a refi package gets recorded. Usually only the deed of trust (or mortgage) gets recorded. The subordination agreement would need to be recorded, too, since that would affect a future title search. But the notes and other paperwork are not recorded.

But back to your question. Yes, I've had recording paperwork messed up, and yes, I've had to get it corrected. That's the title company's job, though it doesn't seem to be much of a priority for them. Figure out the title company and pester them until they get it fixed. This can take a long time and a lot of pestering.