Sonoma County Recorder's Office

Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

to Sonoma County in the nineties with your host, Dana rico and Gina Lash. Hello, I'm dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Today I have with me steven Lehman from the Sonoma County recorder's office and robert Ellison attorney at law. So let's join

them. It's nice to have you on the show steve. Thank you for having us and robert. It's nice to have you. Thank you steve. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? I am the document recording supervisor for the recorder's office. I've worked in the

office for the last 12 years supervisor, staff of eight document recorders and graduated from Sonoma State University and went through the attorney assistant program as well there. Oh, okay. And robert. Tell us a little bit about yourself. I'm an attorney in Sonoma County. I specialize in

construction law and as a consequence of which I have a fair amount of interaction with the recorder's offices around the Bay area and was particularly impressed by how well the Sonoma County Recorder's office operates. Oh well, thank you. Thank you Steve. Who is the official recorder

Denise Peterson is the elected county recorder. She's held that office since 1978 and has been re elected every election since that time. So she's very popular is doing a wonderful job. Absolutely has a wonderful staff and we enjoy working for where is the recorder's office located.

So our viewers will know that in case they need to come down and see you about documents were in the county administration complex. And I tell people on the phone at the north end of santa rosa in the were between Kaiser hospital and steal lane. But

the street address is 5 85 fiscal drive. We're room 103 F. And you can reach us at uh phone number is 5 to 72651. That's the Sonoma County recorders. Okay great. Um what services are provided to the public at the recorder's office? We maintain all the

land records for the county. And that is any documents that reflect any any kind of agreement or court order or any any document that would affect. Land records are recorded in our office. And by recording them, the public has put on constructive notice as to those

events and how they affect property. There are other documents that are not land records that are recordable. Probably the oddest one is the discharge papers from the military service are filed as a safekeeping document with us. But generally speaking, it's the land records were also the

repository for the vital statistic records. So we have all the births, deaths and marriages and those events that occurred in Sonoma County. So if you want a marriage license, you would go to the recorder, come to our office right. As long as the license was taken

out in Sonoma County. Okay, so as long as the license was taken out to get married to get married, if you took the license in Sonoma County and then went to another county to get married, the license would come back to our county. So you always

come back to where the license was issued and then if you want copies of birth certificates, if you were born in this county or that type of thing. Right. This is, this is the office bob. I know that there are a lot of legal documents and

things associated with land use and that is a very highly emotional topic when when people have things recorded against their property, if it's something they don't wish to. Can you tell us about some of these things such as pre leans? Um, I guess mechanics leans less.

Is it Liz pendants, Liz pendant, some latin in there. Tell us about these. Well pre lien documents are required by the contractors license board to be sent from a subcontractor or material man. Somebody who does not have a direct contract with the owner to the owner

to let the owner know these people need to be paid for work of improvement on the property. Now I learned something from steve when we were going through the questions and that could be asked here and and I'm sure that that you can ask him and

he'll tell you what they can do with pre lines up until we were preparing for this. I always had assumed that the pre lien was a private document which went between this person and the property owner, the res again for the pre lien is because if

the person, the subcontractor or material man is not paid by the general contractor, these people have the statutory right to assert what's called a mechanics lien against the property. Mechanics leans are recorded on the property. And it's a way of ensuring that someone who receives the

benefit of a work of improvement on their property Is obligated to pay for that work of improvement. And uh, it's the mechanics leans that in fact get emotional because they do become leans on the property. The person who files it can within the statutory period, which

is 90 days file a lawsuit. And if the homeowner then does not pay the lien the property can be sold at auction, go through the legal procedures and the property can be sold at auction just because the leans put against it. Well, it's not just because

the leans put against it. I thought it was when you sold the property that then you had to pay that lean, well that generally is how most leans end up being paid. Anything like a judgment judgment is entered becomes a lien on the property taxes, not

paid, become a lien on the property. Um, but the person who has a lien doesn't have to wait until the property passes by death 50 years from now or or is sold 20 years from now. They actually can go through the procedures that they wish to.

An example is generally not going to be a homeowner's um experience where there's a $5000 lean. It's not just worth the time and the economics of getting a lawyer involved to try to sell it. But if you have a large private building, let's say you have

a private building that's constructed commercial building and the, and it's, it's, it happens actually fairly often where the owner doesn't pay attention to what's going on, gives the contractor money, the contractor is underfunded another jobs uses the money one way or another for his own benefit,

walks into bankruptcy court walks away from his obligation. Meanwhile, uh, let's say that a big building, you have a lot of steel, let's say that the steel supplier and steel um, subcontractor have not been paid by the general. They may have a lean $100,000 on the

property. Well, they're not going to sit around and wait for that $100,000 magically to appear at such time as the property sold. They will go out and enforce their lien and the homeowner has an obligation in this case, the commercial property owner has an obligation to

make sure that that is paid and if he didn't put checked himself by making sure that he had conditional releases of lean at the time he gave the progress payments or unconditioned and unconditional release of lien at such time as he made the the final payment,

then the property owners is taking the risk that he is going to have a statutory lien asserted against him by these people who have improved his property and have not been paid. I see. So who files the pre lien the subcontractor subcontractor and material men can

file pre leans and this is probably a good time for steve to come in. I didn't know that you could take those down to the recorder's office in 1988. A sub contractors association sponsored legislation to allow or actually to create a new function in the recorder's

office and I'll admit that the recorder's office of statewide weren't exactly enamored with the idea of taking on a new role because it was something outside of the norm of what we usually do. The new function was that people would be allowed or the contractors would

be able to file that these pre leans with us not record them. So they would never become constructive notice as to any event, but simply by filing them in our office. We would then be required to notify that person any time. A notice of completion or

notice of cessation was recorded and what this did was offer protection to the contractors so that they knew when their time limit began to run. Uh, the, the effect of that or that how that legislation has worked out. I think various county to county, we probably

file maybe 200 of those documents a year. Uh, and that's obviously not anywhere close to the amount of mechanics leans that are projects that are going on in the county, but it's a, it's a new function, relatively new function and unfortunately it's a little bit of

confusion because the form that bob is seeing the notice of completion. I mean the pre lien notice at the bottom has recorders copy stamped on it. So we have people that think that it is recorded and so we need to distinguish between the recording and the

filing of them. I see. So the pre lien would be just, they come in and do a pre lien requirement and then it would turn into a Mechanics Lien. If no no, a whole separate document needs to be filed called Mechanics Lien. That the Mechanics Lien

is a document which is recorded. It exists to be recorded if it's simply sent to the property owner and isn't recorded, it has no effect. Um, and, and this leads into the reason for notices of completion, a homeowner Or property owner files a notice of completion

at the completion of either the job in its entirety or a significant stage of construction. The filing of this document triggers the 30 day time period within which a subcontractor or material men must file the mechanics lien and the 60 day period within which the general

contractor must file a mechanics lien. These the reason there are two different time periods is because Once that 30 day window of opportunity closes for the material man or subcontractor to file, then it triggers the obligation of the lender of the landowner homeowner to make his

payment to the general contractor. If the general contractor isn't paid, the contracts generally say on the 35th day after the notice of completion is filed, then the general has his window of opportunity to file his lean. The idea is of course, is to minimize the amount

of paperwork, the filing fees, the headaches for everyone involved, the trees killed. But it's a very strict time regimen which must be followed because after the mechanics Lien is filed then within 90 days a lawsuit has to be filed or an extension of credit has to

be filed, one or the other on that 91st day. If neither one is done, the lead, the lien becomes void. Now it still stays on the record and I'm sure you have people come in thinking that magically the paperwork ignites or something happens. In fact, in

fact what you will see as you will see a mechanics lien that has been filed a year ago or five years ago, 10 years ago is still on, on on title and title. Companies title insurers are reluctant to lend the money until there has been some

subsequent document recorded saying this is in fact a mechanics Lien which has been paid and therefore extinguished or or write a release of Lien document filed by the contractor or if if necessary, a court proceeding which says that that the Mechanics Lien is extinguished as a

matter of law. I see. Do you have anything to add to that steve only that once the Mechanics Lien is recorded, there's very often there's confusion as to the effect of it. We have occasions where we will notify the person that is being leaned. It's a

it's a it's not a requirement but it can be requested by the person that's recording the Mechanics Lien, sometimes that's not done. So the homeowner will discover that they have a lien against the property when they were never notified. Very often homeowners don't understand what a

mechanics lien is. Sometimes they choose to ignore them, which I think is it could be a fatal type of error for someone to make. We generally recommend that they talk to an attorney because it can turn into a loss of home if they decide to ignore

the if it's a subcontractor or anyone could file a mechanics Lien against your property and you would not be notified. It's possible if the individual that file that decided that that's the way they wanted to go about it. However, upon filing it, it's constructive notice. So

it's it's public record in our office that a lien has been filed. So I could go in and find out or anyone could go and find out you have a lien that nobody ever notified you that you had a lien against your house. I thought that

you had to automatically. No. Typically it's it's in your interest to notify somebody because the whole idea of recording the lien is to induce payment. So the idea of doing it without notification wouldn't make any sense. But that that's not the way everybody operates and sometimes

things are done just to annoy people I think. And it works. That would be very annoying. Um What is a notice of non responsibility? Uh That is a document filed with the recorder's office by a property owner. Generally a commercial property owner or a an apartment

building, large residential property owner when they discover or are told most leases required that they be notified. If any work of improvement is going to occur on the property which tells anyone who's actually going there to do the work. I the landowner, I'm not responsible. Now

that is also posted on the property itself and um it's done in sufficient amount of time in advance for the person doing the work to know that they're going to have to make sure they get their monetary recourse against a person who authorized the improvement. Um

The one thing that I wanted to mention though is these, these are not secret documents that are taken in by people into the recorder's office. Excuse me. We're going to have to break here. Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more information. A lot cabin on

the lake. Just me and my wife and fishing. I can tell you what I won't do, won't just curl up and vegetate. Do something I've wanted to do since college. Go back to college. Alaska, secure your retirement plans with us savings bonds. The easy way to

save the safe way to invest. Get them where you work or bank us saving spot. Welcome back. I'm dana D'Errico and I'm here talking to steve Lehman from the Sonoma County recorder's office and bob nelson from private attorney. So let's get back to them. Okay, bob.

We were talking about non responsibility notices of non responsibility and leans and notices of completion. These are all matters of public record and that's what the recorder's office exists to provide a matter of public record. Uh, certain entities, for example, the North coast builders exchange every

week publishes every building permit applied for every septic permit applied for every mechanics lien filed in the amount of against whom it was filed, Who filed it and the amount and they do the same thing, notices of completion, who filed it, affecting what property so that

you not only have constructive notice, but you have the right to go into the recorder's office and you can check the north coast builders exchange weekly paper and find out who's been leaned. And and in fact in fact I think that's one of the things my

secretary enjoys the most looking and seeing, you know which of my clients has leaned whom sometimes they do it without telling me. Um Who for example we will we will lean. Um uh let's say a developer who's in trouble. We will lean that person. We know

we've leaned him but we're also curious who else is leaning him. So we keep track of and how exactly how big a trouble this person is. And that gives us an idea how aggressive we have to be to get our clients money back. And do you

use do you you know because they come to you to record all this correct? Right. The important part of each document that we get is is we need to make sure that we've got the owner of the property name. The parties that are being affected by

the document. Those are the names that we put into our index and those are the names that are available to the public. If somebody has recorded a lean and they have come up with the incorrect name and the document to be invalid as to that property

on them. So all those the documents that we're talking about attached to property by virtue of the names that we index. What do you do with these legal documents when they come to you and ask you to record them, you just record them and that's it.

What is the recording process? Well, we are not uh attorneys were not going to look to the legal sufficiency of the document. So whether or not a mechanics lien is a valid document, uh legally we don't make that determination. We cannot uh, what we look for.

Is that the name of the property owner? Because that's, that's the key to it. We need to make sure that the property is being described so that when that property owner's name is found, they know which property is being affected by the lean. Uh we need

to make sure that it's properly signed. And then there's format requirements simply that when we take that document, we're gonna put it on film so that everybody is going to be able to review it from the film and not the original document. So we need to

make sure that it's reproducible. We need to look for contrast and and items like that. Once it is recorded, it's on film and the film is the record that we keep forever. The original document has returned to the owners. What about notices of completion? Why are

they so important? Well, they basically serve as a legal bar, although not a practical bar to someone coming in belatedly and filing a lien. The homeowner expects that if there is no lien recorded against his property on the 34th day, he'll go down to the recorder's

office, make sure that nothing is recorded on the property, he can pay the general contractor. Now if 50 days later a subcontractor or material man comes in and files mechanics lien on his property. Of course the recorder's office can't keep track of every piece of property

and every notice of completion. They will accept that Mechanics lien, they will file it and one way or another the homeowner is going to get noticed just a minute. You have a lien on your property. Well that leads to one of my quest. People may say

I my contractor, my general told me that no one can record a lien on my property because more than 30 days had passed. I paid him in full and suddenly on the 50th day I find out I have a lien on my property and they come

in and they want to give you the third degree about why that is steve and what's the response they do give us the third degree. The the idea that now there is a lien on the property when we try to communicate that that there is not

a lien that if that that the document that was recorded as invalid doesn't usually go very far in pacifying the angry customer will typically refer them to an attorney because the point is that the lien is invalid and so you would not be able to proceed

with any kind of foreclosure action on the property because it's based on on an invalid lien. But the practicality of the practice of the offices, the documents stay in our office forever. They never go away but simply by recording them does not make them any more

legal. So they've simply recorded an invalid document. Is there a fee for the public and individual to come in and ask about their property. Are there any leans on the property or we're just like a library. The office is open and we have computer terminals that

access all the information and there's no charge for looking. There is charged for copies of documents and there are charges for recording the documents but for someone to come in and look at the to obtain a profile of their property to see if there are any

leans or any other kind of encumbrances. There's no charge for that and their office staff to assist in that kind of a search. Can that be done by the telephone or do you have to come in? You have to come in? We don't have enough staff

to be able to search for people over the phone and bob. My next question for you is you touched upon a little bit. What about if it's an invalid lien. What if someone comes in and files them lien against the property owner and they never did

any work. Nor did they ever have any contract to do the work. I mean you could probably think about it. Put all these leans on you say I don't want the owner to be notified and then just wait for escrow and properties to sell. It seems

like you, somebody would use that. Well what I, what I find most often is that subcontractors who did not send out the preliminary 20 day notice, the pre lien notice Fill a line. It's they can file it but it's invalid. Um less often I have found

that more than 30 days after the notice of completion has been filed the sub will go in and try to file a lien and then I've only had one case in 15 years but it's ongoing currently where someone who is not a licensed contractor went in

and started, he found a house that he believed was abandoned and started fixing it up for himself. And then when the property owner said get out of here um the response was to file a mechanics lien. The law provides for $1,000 in attorney's fees to expunge

these leans and it's it's a very simple process to prove that the person did not have the right to file a lien in the first instance. They can't show that they sent by return receipt, certified mail. The pre lien notice. Um Generally when this is brought

to the attention of a bona fide licensed contractor who was afraid of discipline from the contractors license board when they find out that he didn't do what he is legally obligated to do and then he filed an invalid lien. Usually fairly prompt removal of the lien

by simply filing a release of lien. Um, and then the second instance, it's very easy to show that a notice of completion was filed and you show that date you have the recorders marked stamp copy and All you have to do is send the copy to

the contractor saying more than 30 days has passed and they realize they cannot continue the lien regarding someone who is not licensed, who goes ahead and files a mechanics lien. Anyway, they're more difficult to deal with because they don't care about losing their license or having

their bond affected. So about all you can do is proceed in an expeditious manner. You file a lawsuit, you recover your court costs and your service costs and they get an award for the attorney's fees and the will expunge the mechanics lien because only a licensed

contractor or a bona fide material supplier to a licensed contractor is allowed to file these mechanics links. So when you find out that licensed or that an individual is not a licensed contractor and they have filed the lane, what steps do you take? You contact them?

Hopefully they get an attorney who, they will trust his opinion, they will trust and you provide if the attorney is not a construction attorney, you provide them all the statutory language. They read it and they say to their client, well, you got a problem here. You

know, $1000 in attorney's fees. You could be liable for consequential damages if the lien was designed to prevent the house from selling, for example, um or was were were filed maliciously. Um and and now there are litigious or vexatious litigant statutes which I don't know if,

if they actually reached someone who files leans a vexation, vexatious Selena. Um but sir, certainly the court is going to take judicial notice if this person has filed three leans or not a licensed contractor, they didn't provide any work. They become, you know, a malicious litigant.

And and they're liable for all damages that they cause we're getting towards the end of the show here. We've got about three minutes left and I want to ask you, I am, I'm torn. You have a pen and ink up here steve. And this came from

some of the records at the recorder's office, what are, what is that? This is a drawing of the Jack London's Wolf house and it was given to Bernice Peterson as a gift by the artist William johnson in 1979 when we were talking earlier about the types

of documents that are filed uh contracts and blueprints and plans are filed for. Typically nowadays they are for large projects. At some point, Jack London's architect decided that it would be a good idea to record his or to file his blueprints And in the late seventies

in inventorying our records. The original blueprints for the wolf house were discovered and the artist had copies of those blueprints and reconstructed Jack London's house. You may know that the house was never occupied and burned almost uh actually just before it was completed. Uh so this

is probably as close to To seeing what the house would look like that anyone's ever seen. One of the many interesting documents that come through the office. So you have all kinds of interesting things over there. I noticed there's some brand books and they always intrigued

me. We have a lot of interesting records are records go back to 1835. We have Spanish language documents from when California was mexican rule and under the spanish land grants. So then we go right up through this afternoon. Yeah, I've gone over there just to look

at some of the things. Very interesting books and things. I notice you keep them under lock and key. We keep the old original books under lock and key. Yes, all those are on film. So everybody can look at them. But if you need to look at

the old books were very proud of that collection. That's a lovely collection that you have over there. Um, bob. I wanted to ask you very quickly about Liz pendants. You didn't really cover Liz pendants. I think we have enough time here Liz. Is latin for action

pendants pending. And if you file a lawsuit which affects an interest in real property for example, um If there were a contract to transfer land between two people and the seller sold it to a third party and the prospective purchaser, the one who did didn't get

it believes they have a right to that land and land is inherently unique. Um and it can't, it's not fungible, it can't be totally compensated for by dollars. You can file an action for specific performance. You finally list pendants which acts as a constructive a notice,

a cloud on title so that um no lender will lend on that property. For example, you find out the properties in escrow and it's going to be sold to the third party. You want to prevent it from being sold to the third party or if it's

sold to the third party, money changes hands, you can still go and get it from the third party. If the court agrees that in fact the original seller should have sold the property to you. So it's one way of acting is again, public notice to anybody

who might think about purchasing a piece of property. You believe you have a superior right to it and you have already on file a legal action to enforce your rights. Well that's great. We've run out of time here gentlemen. It's been very interesting and I hope

to have you back again. Thank you both for being with us today. I hope you enjoyed the show. I look forward to seeing you next time. I'm dana Jericho and this is Sonoma County in the nineties.