What happens if your title company goes out of business?

Attorney Tom Olsen: Dave from Deltona. Dave you're on News 96.5. Go ahead.

Dave: I’m a retiree with a paid for house and with the current lien scam environment. I tried to check with my title company to see what kind of protection I had or could get and they're out of business so I don't know how to proceed and then it seems like title companies have evaporated. I don't know if you provide that service of constant title searches or what the deal is.

Attorney Tom Olsen: Well, Dave, first of all, I do have a title company it's called Edgewater Title Company and we would be happy to be of service to you or anybody else who is buying or selling property. Now, Dave, the physical office of the title company that you may have closed your transaction may be out of business but they write through an underwriter like First American Title or The Fund, and those companies are still around so do not be concerned Dave, there is still an insurance company that's going to protect you for any losses.

Now Dave, they gave you title insurance that covered you up through the moment of closing.

Dave: Yes

Attorney Tom Olsen: If anything has happened since the moment of closing, they would not be responsible for that. So Dave, when you talk about real-estate title lien scams, tell me what you're concerned about?

Dave: Just somebody putting a phony lien on the house that I'm not aware of because nobody-- who would check that or how would you know? And then, getting foreclosure notices or some scam they dream up I don't know.

Attorney Tom Olsen: So Dave, I'm in the real-estate business and this is not something that I'm hearing about or have a concern about Dave. Now, if somebody put a lien against your property, if it's a valid lien, first of all, they have to give you a copy of it, give you a notice of it, you have an opportunity to object to it. Generally, we're talking about a construction lien. But, otherwise, you would find out about this lien when you go to sell your home down the road and at that moment in time, you would look at this lien and say, "Hey, that's a scam". And the title company more than likely could ignore it.

There are some people out there that are doing scam liens but they're really just trying to punish people. So there are people that have been upset about the law and the court system and the judge and they're picking out names of lawyers and picking out names of judges. They're preparing what appear to be very official looking liens. I mean, professionally done. But, at the end of the day they’d carry no weight and often a title company would simply ignore those false liens, Dave.

So, all in all, I'm not very concerned about your situation but, Dave, if it's important to you, yes we could do a title search for you.