County UCC liens set to expire

That’s the word from the office of Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, who is reminding small-business owners that any UCC liens filed with county recorders’ offices are set to expire June 30.

Missouri’s Uniform Commercial Code is a set of regulations that spells out how business should be conducted in the state. The code is based on the national Uniform Commercial Code, which is followed in most states.

The code makes interstate business easier for both sides of any transaction, according to Chip Sheppard of Springfield law firm Carnahan Evans Cantwell & Brown PC.

“There was a big push years ago to try and promote business and commerce by giving businesspeople a uniform law across the country, so when they did business in others states they wouldn’t be running into completely different laws,” Sheppard said. “It’s very beneficial and has promoted a lot more interstate commerce; it’s a uniform law that’s relied upon whether you’re selling bass boats or television sets.”

Liens are just one aspect of the UCC; the code spells out how liens are to be filed and processed so that any lessor – in this case a lessor of business capital such as manufacturing or farming equipment – can make sure their claim on the property is duly recognized by the proper authorities.

Missouri statute sets the life span of UCC liens at five years – and changes in state law required UCC liens to be filed with the secretary of state’s office beginning in July of 2001. The last UCC documents filed with the county expire at the end of this month.

Large companies – Bass Pro Shops or Paul Mueller Co., for example – would probably have the most interaction with the UCC lien process.

Stacie Temple, communications director for Carnahan’s office, said businesses or individuals who haven’t filed updated liens with the state could face having their property claimed by someone else, including the lessee.

“Smaller businesses or individuals who don’t do this as frequently may not realize that the law has changed and may not have done this with our office,” Temple said. “We want for all of the companies to realize that and file with our office, or else they risk losing the claim to their property.”

Greene County Recorder Linda Montgomery said she was glad to see the UCC lien activity leave her hands – she estimated that the county office handled several thousand transactions related to those liens annually, including continuations and terminations.

“We didn’t get a whole lot of revenue from those, but I think real estate has more than made up for that over the years,” she said. “Liens were very time consuming. It was a special size form, requiring a special drawer for everything. We were happy to get rid of them.”

The county charged $10–$12 to file, continue or terminate a lien, which produced only a few thousand dollars a year.

The state, meanwhile, charges $17 per filing, plus $1 per page for any attachments. Electronic filings cost $10 dollars.

Both county and state officials agree that the issue will not affect the majority of liens filed in Missouri, which are held by large companies.

What is Uniform Law?

Uniform laws have been debated, refined and approved by the nongovernmental National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Uniform laws, unlike their name would suggest, are not laws at all – they’re merely suggestions to the various states that, if adopted, would make the laws more uniform from state to state.

The Uniform Commercial Code is one of the most recognized of the uniform laws; some form of the UCC is followed in every state but Louisiana.

Source: Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute[[In-content Ad]]