[Sometimes] its (all) in the font

A Conveyancer’s Diary: Thursday 22nd April 2010


[Sometimes] its (all) in the font


One of the most frustrating events that a conveyancer faces, is when the documents are “rejected” by the Deeds Office, for whatever reason. In a quest to achieve “zero reject” status, I am overly cautious in checking the documents once my assistant has prepared these (and she checks the documents as well). So, for example, the owner’s details are checked against the current title deed, against the Deed Search printout and against their identity documents (to see, for example, if the owner’s identity number has changed, or whether the marital status is different to that as indicated on the title deed.) This is the one time in the process when I actually “slow down”, so that the process can be “speeded up” by not having any rejections later. A rejection in the deeds office costs about 8 days as the error must be corrected and the documents re-lodged, to go through the whole examination process in the deeds office a second time.

A day or so ago I checked some transfer documents which my assistant had prepared and as usual, the draft Deed of Transfer had my little “tick” marks next to the vital information. The draft deed was forwarded to the bond attorneys who are registering the bond for the bank. My assistant had a call today from the conveyancing paralegal at the bond attorneys who told her that we had spelled the name of the building incorrectly in the draft deed. To give a clearer picture of the problem, let’s say the building is called “Dailmont Mansions”. Ostensibly we had spelled it as “Dallmont Mansions”. So, we had an “l” where there should be an “ i “. My assistant checked our printed out draft and also checked the document on the computer. No, we had it correctly spelled as “Dailmont”.

Our only guess was that in faxing the draft deed to the bond attorneys, the quality of the font dissipated and the “ i “ became elongated to show up as an “l”.

The conveyancing software uses the Arial font. I prefer, thanks to Judi, the Georgia font.

So, sometimes the apparent error is (possibly) in the font.

Regards,
Sieg



Quote:

“My own personal experiences as a layperson and a student of law have given me a profound insight and immense appreciation for those unsung heroes of the legal profession who provide so freely and unhesitatingly of their time, knowledge and expertise without as much as a thought of consideration for payment thereof”

Vincent StLaurant Phillips in a letter published in the De Rebus, May 2010 [I received the online version of next month’s De Rebus today].