§ 2103.Duties of filing officer

This section is the operating manual for filing officers, spelling out what has to happen the moment a federal lien document crosses the counter. When a notice of federal lien, a refiling of one, or a notice revoking a release-type certificate is presented, a filing officer who is the Secretary of State has to file, index, and mark it the same way the Commercial Code treats a financing statement, borrowing that system's mechanics wholesale rather than building a separate one. A county recorder instead accepts the document, records it the way Government Code Section 27320 directs, and indexes it by the name of the person against whose interest the lien applies in the general index, the same index that catches every other document recorded against that name.

Certificates that release or unwind a lien get parallel treatment. When a certificate of release or nonattachment reaches the Secretary of State, it is filed, indexed, and marked as if it were a termination statement; a certificate of discharge or subordination is filed, indexed, and marked as if it were a release of collateral. If any of those refiled notices or certificates instead reach a county recorder, the same recording-and-general-index procedure that applies to the original notice applies again.

Subdivision (d) adds a public-facing duty. On request, a filing officer has to issue a certificate stating whether a lien notice or certificate naming a particular person is on file as of a given date and hour, and, if one is, when it was filed, and has to furnish a copy of any federal lien document on request. A county recorder sets its own search fee to cover actual cost and charges for copies under the standard Government Code fee schedule; the Secretary of State folds the certificate into the combined certificate procedure the Commercial Code already uses for its own searches, at that section's fee.