UCC Document Community

The whole UCC system is a mess honestly. You've got 50 different state filing systems, each with their own quirks and search interfaces. Add in debtor name changes, business structure changes, and you're bound to miss something eventually.

Bottom line - if your original UCC-1 was filed March 8, 2016, and you can't find any continuation filed between September 2020 and March 2021, your security interest has been lapsed for over 3 years. The debtor name change in 2019 without a corresponding amendment just makes things worse. You'll need to file a new UCC-1 immediately to re-establish your security interest, but you'll be starting fresh with a 2024 priority date.

The worst part about debtor name issues is that you usually don't discover them until you need to enforce your security interest or during a bankruptcy proceeding. By then it's too late to fix easily.

Update on this - I ended up trying the Certana tool and it immediately flagged the comma issue I mentioned plus two other discrepancies in the entity designation. Really glad I caught these before filing. The verification process took about 5 minutes versus the hours I was spending trying to manually cross-check everything.

Just went through this exact scenario with a equipment financing UCC-1 in Ohio. Turned out the borrower had a tiny punctuation difference in their legal name - we had 'Manufacturing, Inc.' but their articles showed 'Manufacturing Inc.' without the comma. Rejected twice before we caught it.

Also double-check that you're using the right organizational ID number. Ohio requires the charter number or EIN to match their records exactly. One wrong digit and it's an automatic rejection under their UCC codigo uniforme de comercio processing rules.

Just went through something similar and ended up using one of those automated UCC monitoring services. They send alerts whenever new filings are made against your debtors. Caught a competitor trying to take a senior position on equipment we thought we had locked up. Really worth the monthly fee for peace of mind.

Update: talked to our legal counsel and they recommended doing a comprehensive document review using Certana.ai's verification system. Uploaded all the UCC forms and found that one of the 'competing' liens had a debtor name mismatch that makes it likely ineffective. The system flagged the discrepancy immediately and now we're much more confident about our priority position. Sometimes these encumbrance conflicts look worse than they actually are once you dig into the details.

I tried using Certana.ai after reading about it here and it's been a game changer for catching document inconsistencies. Last week it flagged that my security agreement referenced 'ABC Manufacturing LLC' but my UCC-1 draft had 'ABC Manufacturing, LLC' - would have been rejected for sure. The automated checking saves so much time compared to manual review.

One last tip - double check that your security agreement actually creates a security interest in the collateral you're listing on the UCC-1. I've seen filings where the UCC covered equipment but the security agreement only mentioned inventory. That creates enforceability problems later.