Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

A fictitious deed of trust clause is used to incorporate paragraphs from a standard deed of trust that was recorded somewhere by someone, your lender could just as easily include all these boilerplate paragraphs in your deed of trust, except you would have to pay extra to the county recorder who charges by the page. So by referencing the fictitious deed of trust you are saving a few dollars in closing costs.

Mr. Stone is correct but maybe not entirely clear. In order to facilitate real estate transactions and reduce the paperwork load on county recorders, as well as the per-page recording fees, each county has recorded a "fictitious deed of trust" that contains all the language of the standard California "long form" deed of trust. There is then a standardized "short form" deed of trust with fictitious deed of trust clause in it that states that all the terms and conditions of the long form deed of trust recorded as the ficticious deed of trust are incorporated into it by reference. These short form DOTs then list the book and page in the county records of each fictitious DOT in each county, in case you want to look it up, and to make the incorporation by reference complete. This way each DOT needs only to be a couple of pages long instead of something like a dozen.

So, in effect, the "legalese" in your short form Deed of Trust with Assignment of Rents is not merely hidden by putting it in 8-point type.......it isn't even there! It's "incorporated by reference" from another document down at the recorder's office.