In 2005, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts decided a case, National Lumber Co. v. Lombardi, in which the Court held that documents sent to Registries of Deeds via mail are considered recorded the moment they are received by the Registry. This decision was problematic as these documents are in actuality recorded into the Registries' computer systems over the course of the day they are received.
Yesterday, the Governor signed Senate Bill 2549 into law to rectify this situation. Under the new law, "No instrument received by the register shall be considered recorded until the register assigns to the instrument an instrument number, or book and page number, as the case may be." This means that once this law goes into effect, documents are not officially recorded until entered into the Registry's computer database. Click here to read the full text of the new law.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
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2 comments:
I'm confused, If the documents are recorded the same day they are received, as suggested in the post, what is the difference between being recorded the day received and when entered into the computer? Is it something about the time of day they are recorded?
In the past, most Registries of Deeds had backlogs of days between when documents were received in the mail and entered into the registry's records. While this isn't the case today, there is a great importance in the order in which documents are recorded by the registry for matters such as lien priority. The new law removes many of the legal questions presented with electronic recording.
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