Tax Liens
The Recorder's Office has information on record for several types of liens. The records are open to the public. The Recorder's Office staff will do a tax lien search for a per name fee or you can come to the office to view the records yourself at no cost.
A request for a search on a specific debtor name can be done in the form of a letter, memo or Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)-12 form.
Types of Tax Liens
You can search by name for state and federal tax liens recorded by a government agency.
In most cases, tax liens are not indexed against a parcel of land. They are indexed by taxpayer name. When an abstract is brought up to date abstractors search by name and by legal description, so tax liens appear in abstracts even when they are not indexed by legal description in the Recorder's Office.
Bringing Abstracts Up to Date
Judgments will show on an abstract, but the information is obtained at the Clay County Court Administration Office. When an abstract is brought up to date, an abstract company does various searches in and outside of the courthouse. Searching for liens in the courthouse is not the same as bringing an abstract up to date. Most lending institutions will require an attorney do a title opinion after an abstract is brought up to date to determine if there are liens on the property.