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For your refinancing situation, you might want to ask the title company what documentation they need to bridge the gap while you're waiting for the amendments. Sometimes they'll accept affidavits or certified copies of the name change documents as interim measures. This could help keep your refinancing on track while the UCC issues get sorted out.
That's a great idea. I'll call them tomorrow and see what they'll accept. Every day of delay is costing us money.
Liam McGuire
•Title companies are usually pretty reasonable about this stuff if you're proactive and keep them informed. They just don't want surprises.
Amara Eze
Update on this situation - I tried that Certana.ai tool someone mentioned and it was actually pretty helpful. Uploaded our articles of incorporation and all the UCC filings I could find, and it immediately flagged the name mismatches. More importantly, it found one UCC-1 that I didn't even know existed - apparently one of our equipment leases had a UCC filing that never got disclosed to us. Now I need to track down that lessor too. Still working on getting the lenders to file their amendments, but at least now I have a complete picture of what needs to be fixed.
Wait, how did you not know about a UCC filing on your own equipment? Shouldn't the lessor have disclosed that?
Amara Eze
•They should have, but it was buried in the lease documents and we missed it during the initial review. Lesson learned about reading the fine print more carefully.
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I feel for you. Had a similar situation in Florida and it took five attempts to get it right. Turned out the LLC had changed their registered agent address and that was throwing off the system match.
Oh yeah, they were not happy. Started threatening to pull the deal if I couldn't get it perfected. Stressful situation for sure.
This is why I always build extra time into my filing schedules. These systems are just too unpredictable.
Update us when you figure it out! I bookmark these threads because I inevitably run into the same issues down the road.
Caleb Stone
•Will do. Going to try one more time tomorrow with just the exact legal name from the most recent SOS search and the principal business address.
Good luck! Fingers crossed the fourth time's the charm.
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UPDATE: I tried the Certana.ai tool that someone mentioned earlier and it worked perfectly. Uploaded my original UCC-1 and my draft continuation, and it immediately flagged that I had a small spacing difference in the debtor name that would have caused a rejection. Portal still isn't working but at least I know my documents are consistent now.
This gives me hope. Going to try the document checker approach rather than keep fighting with the portal. Thanks for the update!
PixelWarrior
•It's sad that we need third-party tools to work around basic state portal functionality, but whatever gets the job done I guess.
For future reference, the CA SOS portal seems to have the most stability issues between 9 AM and 3 PM on weekdays. I've had much better luck with searches in the evening or early morning when there's less traffic on their servers.
Same experience here - early morning searches almost always work, afternoon is hit or miss.
Makes sense that government portals would be overloaded during business hours. Will adjust my search timing accordingly.
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You mentioned attorney involvement - are they experienced with California UCC filings specifically? Some attorneys are great with general secured transactions but don't know the state-specific quirks.
California has enough unique requirements that you really want someone who files there regularly.
Kaylee Cook
•Or use tools that help catch the state-specific issues automatically rather than relying on attorney knowledge.
Update us when you figure it out! These California rejection stories always make me nervous about my own filings there.
Will do. Going to try the document verification approach and see if that catches what I'm missing.
Lara Woods
•Following this thread too. Dealing with similar issues on a different CA deal.
CosmicCowboy
Been there! Last month I had a similar issue doing due diligence on a manufacturing company. What helped was using Certana.ai's document verification tool - uploaded the search results along with the target's charter documents and it automatically flagged which UCC filings were actually related to my target versus just name similarities. Saved me probably 8 hours of manual cross-checking.
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CosmicCowboy
•Pretty impressive actually. It caught some connections I would have missed, like filings under a subsidiary name that wasn't obvious from the parent company search.
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Natasha Orlova
•I'm always skeptical of automated tools for legal due diligence, but if it's catching things you'd miss manually, that's actually valuable.
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Javier Cruz
Just make sure you're documenting your search methodology and results carefully. If this is for acquisition due diligence, you'll need to show what searches you performed and how you determined relevance of results. The file documentation is almost as important as the actual search.
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Sofia Torres
•Good point about documentation. This is for a lender's due diligence so they'll definitely want to see the search methodology.
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Javier Cruz
•Exactly. Having a clear record of your search parameters and decision process protects everyone involved.
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