County Recorder

The County Recorder is an elected position and serves a four-year term.

Responsibilities of the County Recorder include compiling and maintaining archival storage and indexing of real estate and personal property transactions, the management of those records and the destruction of obsolete documents.

In cooperation with the Minnesota Secretary of State, the County Recorder is responsible for management of all personal property documents relating to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). The UCC governs security interests in and lender priority to personal property.

Another cooperation between the County Recorder and the Secretary of State is Minnesota's Central Notification System (CNS). The CNS is for notification by lenders who have loaned money to farm product producers to buyers of those farm products that the lenders have a financial interest in those farm products.

Minnesota operates under the "Race to the Recorder" notice law, which means that the person who gets their document filed first establishes their interest first. For this reason, the Recorder's Office files documents by the minute. Typical documents filed in the Office of the County Recorder would include real estate deeds, mortgages, bonds, military service discharges, federal and state tax liens and bankruptcies, to name a few.

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