2025-12-15

Briana Cooper

Pending Legislation

Ohio’s Senate Bill 101 lays out a set of targeted reforms designed to strengthen chain of title, reduce closing delays, and protect real property owners from avoidable hardship. Developed by the Ohio State Bar Association’s Real Property Section, the Bill addresses two long-standing challenges: inconsistent recording of memoranda of trust (MOTs) and the recurring “same-name debtor” problem associated with statutory liens.

 

Mike Sikora was involved in drafting and finalizing the Bill language and testified before the Ohio House of Representatives as the expert for the Ohio State Bar Association in support of the Bill.

 

Mandatory Memorandum of Trust to Improve Title Clarity
Under current law, recording a memorandum of trust is optional, even when real property is conveyed by a trustee of a disclosed trust. This creates significant title complications when a past conveyance involving a trust appears in the chain of title without any accompanying MOT or similar instrument under R.C. 5301.255. Title agents, claims counsel, and others are often left without sufficient evidence of trustee authority. Those issues can be difficult to resolve, particularly when they arise decades later.

 

Senate Bill 101 would make the recording of an MOT mandatory whenever real estate is conveyed by a trustee of a disclosed trust.

 

To further streamline curative efforts, the Bill creates a new four-year curative period under R.C. 5301.071(F) for conveyances from a trust when no MOT or other qualifying instrument was recorded. After four years, absent certain unusual circumstances, title would be deemed cured.

 

In addition, the OSBA advocated for the Bill to permit the recording of an affidavit after the fact to allow a MOT or similar instrument to be inserted into the chain of title, if such an instrument was inadvertently not timely placed of record. This would mirror the successful approach used in Ohio’s power-of-attorney statute following reforms enacted in Ohio’s most recent legislative session by way of Senate Bill 94. Affidavit curative language is not going to make it into Senate Bill 101 before it passes and is signed into law by the Governor. So the OBSA is advocating to include that language in another pending Bill under consideration by the General Assembly.

 

Reducing Challenges from Same-Name Debtor Misidentifications
Ohio’s statutory non-judicial liens, covering areas such as child support, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, and tax obligations, currently require only the debtor’s name and lien amount. This minimal information, coupled with Ohio’s general lien indexing system for those types of liens, has contributed to the persistent “same-name debtor” problem, where innocent property owners are mistakenly flagged as having liens against their property simply because they share a name with another person who is the actual debtor. These misidentifications derail transactions, delay closings, and give rise to title claims.

 

To minimize these errors, Senate Bill 101 proposes a modest but meaningful fix: requiring lien creditors to include the last known address of the lien debtor when filing a lien. This additional data point—already required for judicial liens under Senate Bill 94—would dramatically reduce false alarms while imposing only a minimal burden on lien-filing agencies.

 

By extending the last known address requirement to non-judicial statutory liens, the Bill would enhance accuracy in title searches for liens related to child support, taxes, unemployment compensation, workers’ compensation, personal property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and severance taxes, and allow title claims involving same-name issues to be resolved more swiftly and easily.

 

A Practical Step Forward for Ohio Real Estate
Collectively, the reforms in Senate Bill 101 aim to modernize Ohio’s title system, promote transactional efficiency, and reduce the likelihood of avoidable title defects. The mandatory recording of MOTs, clear curative timelines, and improved debtor identification standards would bring real, practical benefits for title insurance companies and their agents across the state.