New Resolution Could Help Counties Adopt E-Recording.

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws here has passed the Uniform Real Property Electronic Recording Act that would authorize records officials to take steps to accept and store records in electronic form provided that the act is made into law by the states.

The NCCUSL is a national organization that represents the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Specifically, it is made up of attorneys whose charge is to draft laws that are uniform for all states in the country where controversy exists from one state to the next on a certain practice or statute such as the issue of e-recording.

"A good percentage of residential mortgages are sold across state lines, so it would be very helpful for the industry to have electronic processes to both file those loans in the land records and to both search and retrieve the information in those land records electronically," said David D. Bilken, who chaired the drafting committee on URPERA. "There is over 3,000 recording offices in the United States, and this act attempts to make it possible for all of those parties to move into the electronic age because most state laws require that the recordation of loans be in ink on paper of certain sizes with certain margins.

"With laws like this in place, there's a major barrier to electronic recording," he continued. "These are areas where the federal government has not acted on so the organization felt that we could take it upon ourselves to draft an act that would take into account the needs of the individual states and be uniform at the same time."

The act removes the barriers to e-recording in each state. Specifically, it does not require any state or recorder to move toward e-recording, but does say that if an individual state has any laws on the books that would prohibit e-recording, those laws no longer apply to the mortgage industry.

So, as long as the e-recording method used in that state meets the requirements of the act, that process would be considered valid. The standards that the act sets up are as ...