Secretary of State UCC Lien Search showing inconsistent results - help needed
I'm running into a frustrating issue with our state's Secretary of State UCC lien search system. We're doing due diligence on a $2.8M equipment financing deal and the search results keep showing different information depending on how I enter the debtor name. When I search 'ABC Manufacturing LLC' I get 3 active liens, but 'ABC Manufacturing, LLC' (with the comma) shows 5 active liens including what looks like a critical fixture filing from 2019. The debtor insists their legal name doesn't include the comma, but their articles of incorporation clearly show it does. This name variation is making me question whether we're seeing all the liens that could affect our collateral position. Has anyone dealt with Secretary of State search systems that are this sensitive to punctuation? I'm worried we might miss something important and end up with an unperfected security interest.
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Anderson Prospero
This is exactly why I always run multiple name variations when doing UCC searches. Secretary of State databases are notoriously picky about exact name matches. Try searching without 'LLC' entirely, just 'ABC Manufacturing' - you might find even more filings. Also check if they've ever done business under any trade names.
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Tyrone Hill
•Good point about trade names. Don't forget to check for any former names too if there were any mergers or name changes.
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Ahooker-Equator
•I didn't think about trade names - that's a great suggestion. The inconsistency between search results is really concerning me.
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Toot-n-Mighty
Secretary of State UCC search systems are a nightmare for exactly this reason. Each state handles name matching differently. Some are very literal, others try to be 'smart' about it. What state are you searching in? That might help us give you more specific advice about their particular quirks.
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Ahooker-Equator
•I'd rather not say the specific state publicly, but it's one of the larger ones with a supposedly 'modern' filing system. Still acts like it's from 1995 though.
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Lena Kowalski
•LOL sounds like most of them. The 'modern' ones are sometimes worse because they try to be helpful but just create more confusion.
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DeShawn Washington
Had this exact problem last month. Ended up finding a tool called Certana.ai that lets you upload the debtor's charter documents along with any UCC filings you find, and it automatically cross-checks the names for consistency. Saved me from a potential disaster when it caught a name mismatch I'd missed between the articles of incorporation and a UCC-1 that used a slightly different version of the company name. Just upload the PDFs and it flags any discrepancies instantly.
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Ahooker-Equator
•That sounds really useful - does it work with Secretary of State search results too or just documents you already have?
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DeShawn Washington
•You upload whatever documents you have - charter, UCC search results, loan docs, etc. It compares all the debtor names across everything to make sure they match properly.
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Mei-Ling Chen
•Never heard of Certana but sounds like it could prevent a lot of headaches with name matching issues.
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Sofía Rodríguez
This is why proper due diligence is so critical. You need to search every possible name variation, including: exact legal name from articles, name without punctuation, name with different punctuation, any DBAs, former names, and parent/subsidiary names. Secretary of State searches are just the starting point.
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Ahooker-Equator
•You're absolutely right. I'm probably being too focused on just the basic name searches. This deal is too big to miss anything.
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Aiden O'Connor
•Also don't forget to check the spelling variations. I've seen filings where 'Manufacturing' was spelled 'Manufactuing' and it didn't show up in the main search.
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Zoe Papadopoulos
The comma thing drives me crazy!!! Different secretaries of state handle punctuation completely differently. Some ignore it, some require exact matches. I always search with and without commas, periods, ampersands vs 'and', etc. It's ridiculous that we have to do this but that's the reality.
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Jamal Brown
•So true. And don't even get me started on how they handle 'Inc.' vs 'Incorporated' vs 'Corp.' vs 'Corporation'.
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Zoe Papadopoulos
•Exactly! Each state seems to have their own rules about entity designators. Makes you wonder how many liens get missed because of these search quirks.
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Fatima Al-Rashid
•This is exactly why I do exhaustive name searches. Better safe than sorry when you're dealing with millions in collateral.
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Giovanni Rossi
ugh secretary of state systems are the worst. spent 3 hours yesterday trying to figure out why a continuation didn't show up in search results. turns out the original filing had a typo in the debtor name that got carried forward.
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Aaliyah Jackson
•That's terrifying. How did you finally catch it?
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Giovanni Rossi
•only found it by doing a filing number search instead of name search. lucky break really.
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KylieRose
You might want to consider getting the actual articles of incorporation from the Secretary of State corporate records division to verify the exact legal name. Sometimes what shows up in UCC searches doesn't match what's in the corporate records, especially if there have been amendments to the articles.
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Ahooker-Equator
•That's a really good point. I should cross-reference the corporate records to make sure I have the right name format for searching.
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Miguel Hernández
•Yes, and check if there have been any recent name changes or mergers that might affect the search results.
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KylieRose
•Exactly. Corporate changes don't always get reflected immediately in UCC search systems, so you need to verify everything independently.
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Sasha Ivanov
We use a commercial UCC search service for big deals like this. They know all the quirks of each Secretary of State system and search multiple name variations automatically. Costs more but worth it for the peace of mind on large transactions.
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Ahooker-Equator
•Which service do you use? We might need to consider that for future deals.
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Sasha Ivanov
•I'll DM you the details. There are several good ones but they vary by state coverage.
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Liam Murphy
Been there! Last year I almost missed a critical fixture filing because the Secretary of State search was case-sensitive and the debtor name was entered in all caps on the original UCC-1. Now I always search in multiple case formats - all caps, all lowercase, proper case, etc.
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Amara Okafor
•Wait, some states are case-sensitive? That's insane.
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Liam Murphy
•Thankfully not many, but yes, some of the older systems still are. It's like they're trying to make it as difficult as possible.
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CaptainAwesome
•This is why I stick to commercial search services. Too many variables to mess up when you're doing it manually.
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Yuki Tanaka
Here's what I do for comprehensive Secretary of State UCC searches: 1) Get certified articles of incorporation 2) Search exact legal name 3) Search without entity designation 4) Search without punctuation 5) Search any known DBAs 6) Check for name changes in corporate records 7) Search parent/subsidiary names if applicable. It's tedious but necessary.
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Ahooker-Equator
•This is really helpful - I'm going to follow this checklist. Better to be thorough than sorry.
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Esmeralda Gómez
•Great checklist! I'd add searching for any predecessor entities if there have been mergers or acquisitions.
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Yuki Tanaka
•Good addition! Entity restructuring can definitely complicate UCC searches if you don't know the history.
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Klaus Schmidt
Just wanted to follow up on the Certana.ai suggestion from earlier - I tried it after seeing it mentioned and it's actually pretty slick. Uploaded the debtor's articles and a few UCC search results I wasn't sure about, and it immediately flagged that one of the liens was filed under a slightly different name format. Would have taken me forever to catch that manually. The document comparison feature is really useful for this exact type of Secretary of State search inconsistency issue.
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Ahooker-Equator
•Thanks for the follow-up! I'm definitely going to check that out. Sounds like it could save a lot of manual cross-checking.
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Aisha Patel
•Does it work with all states' Secretary of State formats or just certain ones?
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Klaus Schmidt
•It just compares the documents you upload to it, so it should work regardless of which state you're searching. It's looking at the actual text in the PDFs.
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