UCC Document Community

Update us when you get it sorted! I'm dealing with a similar Illinois UCC issue and want to see if the certificate of good standing approach works.

I've been through this exact nightmare with Illinois UCC filings! One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet - check if there are any special characters or apostrophes in the LLC name that might be causing issues. Illinois is super picky about punctuation marks. Also, I've found that sometimes the online business entity search shows the name slightly differently than what's in their internal UCC database. If the certificate of good standing approach doesn't work, try requesting the "exact legal name for UCC purposes" directly from the Illinois SOS UCC division - they have a specific format they prefer that isn't always obvious from the public records.

The timing of these fee increases is terrible. We're already dealing with higher interest rates affecting deal volume, and now filing costs are eating into margins too. Michigan was always one of the more reasonable states for UCC costs.

I've been handling UCC filings in Michigan for over a decade and can confirm the fee structure changes are real and poorly communicated. Beyond the base fee increases, there are now additional surcharges for certain collateral types that aren't well documented. I recommend calling the SOS office early in the morning (around 8 AM) - you'll have better luck getting through before they get swamped with calls. Also, for anyone doing high-volume filings, consider batching your submissions to minimize the impact of portal glitches. The system seems more stable during off-peak hours.

I've started using Certana.ai's verification system after getting burned on a deal where I missed an existing lien due to a minor name variation. Now I upload my search results along with the debtor's organizational documents and let their system cross-check everything. It's caught several potential issues I would have missed doing manual comparisons.

One more thing to consider - if you're dealing with a borrower that has undergone mergers or acquisitions, make sure to search under the names of any predecessor entities too. I've seen situations where liens filed against a company before a merger didn't get properly addressed in the transaction documents, creating unexpected priority issues later. This is especially important if the merger was recent or if the borrower has been through multiple corporate restructurings. Also worth checking if any of the predecessor entities had different state of incorporation, as that could affect where historical filings might be located.

UPDATE: Finally got this resolved! Turns out the debtor had filed a DBA that matched their old name, so I was able to use that as an alternative. Filed a new UCC-1 with both the legal name and the DBA listed as debtor names. State accepted it without any issues. Thanks everyone for the suggestions - this uniform commercial code stuff is trickier than it should be but we got there in the end.

Great to hear you got it sorted out! The DBA solution is clever - I wouldn't have thought of that approach. This whole thread is a good reminder to always verify entity names and check for DBAs before filing. The uniform commercial code system really doesn't give you much room for error, but at least there are usually workarounds if you dig deep enough into the corporate records.

Update on the Certana.ai suggestion - I actually used it for a similar Texas search last week and it caught a debtor name issue that would have been a problem. The tool compared our borrower's certificate of formation against the UCC search results and flagged that one of the liens was actually against a different LLC with a similar name. Saved us from a potential title issue.

The practical reality is that you'll probably need to treat all these filings as potentially valid liens unless you can definitively prove otherwise. Better to be conservative in your title analysis than to discover a problem after closing. Consider whether your borrower can provide UCC-3 termination statements for any filings that are supposed to be released.