Don't waste your time trying to talk to the developer, title company or anyone else. FORECLOSE the lien. Then the other parties are forced to address the issue. Otherwise they are going to just jerk you around until you have blown the limitations period discussed below.

It is odd that the lien did not show up in the title abstract upon which the title insurance policy was issued. I think that you should first find out if it was properly served and recorded. In Connecticut this function is usually entrusted to a state marshal. Following his service of process and recording, the marshal returns a copy of the lien with his return of service to the attorney to be filed with the court as part of the complaint initiating the foreclosure action.

You should also check to see that your state's limitations periods for both recording the lien and initiating foreclosure action have not expired.  In Connecticut the contractor/subcontractor has 90 days from the time work was substantially completed to serve and record the lien. If the lien is properly served and recorded he has 1 year to initiate the foreclosure action. If these limitations periods have expired the court is stripped of subject matter jurisdiction to entertain the foreclosure action.

Don't worry about whether or not the title company will or will not pay you. Your lien will be paid from the equity of the property owner's house if you are successful in your foreclosure. He can take up the issue with his title insurance company. The nice part of this entire scenario is that your lien seems to predate the sale of the property to the new owner and the recording of his mortgage. Even though the mechanic's lien relates back to an earlier date for purposes of establishing priorities in a foreclosure, in many cases the homeowner's mortgagee has recorded its mortgage earlier than that time, and most often has priority over the lien. That does not sound like the case here. It sounds as if you may have a first place priority in the foreclosure if all of the recording, service of process and limitations requirements have been met.

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