Corrective Deeds: Fixing a Misspelled Name on a Claremont Title

The recorded deed came back and your middle initial is wrong. Or your surname is spelled the way people usually misspell it. Or the legal description has a digit transposed. Or you took title as an unmarried woman and married two years later, and the record still says what it said.

None of that is a crisis. All of it is a problem you should handle now rather than at closing, because the record does not tidy itself and the person who will be inconvenienced is you or your heirs.

Why a small error matters at all

Because the record is searched by NAME as well as by parcel. Title examination looks for judgments, liens, and instruments recorded against the people in the chain, and that search depends on names matching. A variation creates two failure modes at once.

The first is a false NEGATIVE in the chain: the searcher looking for a conveyance from Robert J. Smith may not readily connect an instrument recorded by R. James Smith, so the chain appears to skip a link. Why that matters is set out in the chain of title guide.

The second is a false POSITIVE against a stranger: a name that has drifted can pull in judgments belonging to somebody else entirely, which then have to be eliminated with documentation before the policy issues.

Either way, what should be a routine sale acquires a requirement, and requirements take time you may not have.

Name variation is often handled without a new deed

Start with the good news. Many name issues are resolved by a recital rather than by re-recording anything.

Where a person is the same person under two forms of a name, the next deed can name them with an ALSO KNOWN AS recital, so the instrument connects both forms and closes the gap for future searchers. A title company can also often eliminate a stranger's judgment using a fully completed Statement of Information, which is exactly what that intrusive-feeling form exists for.

Marriage, divorce, and legal name changes are ordinarily handled the same way, through recitals in the next conveyance supported by documentation, rather than by correcting the old deed. Ask your title officer which route applies before assuming a correction is needed.

When a corrective instrument is the answer

Where the recorded deed itself is wrong in substance, a correction has to be recorded.

A CORRECTION or SCRIVENER'S DEED is a new deed between the same parties that restates the conveyance correctly and recites the recording reference of the earlier deed and the nature of the error. It is the cleanest approach and it generally requires the original GRANTOR to sign, which is the practical obstacle: the seller has moved on, may be uncooperative, may be dead, or may be a dissolved entity.

An AFFIDAVIT of correction is used in some contexts for minor matters, though what it can accomplish is narrower than people hope and depends on the nature of the error and on underwriter practice. It does not convey.

A QUITCLAIM from the party who might otherwise be argued to hold something can resolve certain situations. The instrument's limits are described in the deed types guide.

And where the parties cannot be assembled or the matter is contested, the route may be a court action, described in the quiet title guide.

Description errors are a different weight class

A wrong name is usually curable with cooperation. A wrong LEGAL DESCRIPTION may mean the deed conveyed something other than what everyone intended, and that is not a typo, it is a conveyance problem.

Common versions include the wrong lot number, the correct tract but the wrong recorded map reference, and an except-therefrom clause dropped when a deed was retyped so a previously excluded strip appears to have been conveyed. How descriptions are constructed and how they drift is covered in the legal description guide.

These correct the same way, but the stakes are higher because a third party may have relied on the record in the meantime, and because the fix may require the cooperation of a neighbor whose own parcel is implicated.

The step you should not skip

Do not prepare and record a corrective deed on your own initiative from a template. Two reasons, both concrete.

First, a recorded instrument that is wrong makes the record worse, not better, and it cannot simply be withdrawn. A badly drafted correction can create a new cloud, raise a question about whether an additional transfer occurred, and trigger consequences on the property tax record that the original error did not.

Second, the goal is not merely to record something. It is to produce a record a future underwriter will insure. Have the title company that will be asked to insure it confirm, in advance, that the proposed instrument will resolve the matter to their satisfaction. That single call is what separates a fix from an expensive gesture.

So the routing is: call your title officer first to identify whether the issue is a name variation, a scrivener's error, or a description problem, and what document would cure it. Have the instrument drafted by an attorney or prepared through the title company. And where an ownership right, a boundary, or a party's cooperation is in genuine dispute, take it to a real estate attorney rather than trying to paper over it.

Catch it early. When your recorded deed and policy arrive, read them; what to check is in the post-closing document guide.

For the sequence that produces these documents, see the title and closing guide. Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.