Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Homestead Question for Couples in CA

Probably not; the saying in the escrow and title business is "it's OK to oversign, but not to undersign" which to them would mean it's OK to sign as Thomas P. Doe III where the typed name on the document says T.P. Doe, but not vice-versa. I don't know if this is legally correct, but the people that handle the signing of title documents every day seem to believe it is.... and by extension, I think if the property is accurately identified, the declaration will be effective.

To be sure, here's what I suggest. Go to your county recorder's office after it is recorded, and see if it shows up on a search based on your parcel number. Also ask the person on duty at the counter if he/she thinks it will make a difference. The issue is whether your homestead declaration will show up when a creditor searches for it.

I know from my own experience that it is difficult to match names in doing searches using computers, because there is NO LEEWAY on the sequence of characters in a search. [email protected] will not work if the system thinks it has to be [email protected] - the only difference being the dot, decimal or period, whatever you call it, between the Dept and the 31. For just this reason, record searchers have to proceed much more carefully, or carefully in a different sense, than they did when dealing with hard copy lists and hopefully that will happen if anyone looks for your declaration. It isn't a validity issue; it's a question of proper indexing and retrieval.