Lee R. Schroeder is an Ohio licensed attorney with Schroeder Law LLC in Ottawa. He limits his practice to business, real estate, estate planning and agriculture issues in northwest Ohio. He can be reached at lee@leeschroeder.com or at (419) 523-5523. This article is not intended to serve as legal advice, and specific advice should be sought from the licensed attorney of your choice based upon the specific facts and circumstances that you face.
Just getting a document to the courthouse with the appropriate fee to file doesn’t ensure that the document affects the property it’s supposed to affect. Every inch of land in Ohio has a unique historical record of ownership. Identifying that history of ownership is done by professional title examiners, who are attorneys like Lee. That history of the property is referred to as the property’s “chain of title.”
Most people know that when they buy real estate, the documents showing ownership and liens should be recorded at the local courthouse. However, simply getting a document to the courthouse with the appropriate filing fee is sometimes not enough to ensure that the document effects the property that it is supposed to effect.
Every square inch of Ohio has a unique historical record of ownership that can be traced back to federal government land grants, sometimes dated before Ohio’s statehood.
Read more about recording documents in the proper chain of title in Lee’s article in the Lima News here: Legal-Ease: Is a document recorded in the proper chain of title?
Source: LimaOhio.com, “Legal-Ease: Is a document recorded in the proper chain of title?,” by Lee R. Schroeder, October 31, 2015