Those requests bother me... we don't do them.  First off, I am assuming that they only want you to check for "liens and judgments" against the current owner.  In order to do that you have to find out when the current owner took title - and if they took title through a quit-claim deed you have to look some more.

If they want all open liens then you may have to search the prior owners too, depending on how long liens and judgments may be valid in your state.  If they ask for a "lien and judgment" search and you miss a lien against a previous owner because you assumed they "meant" current owner... well, that would just be bad.

Next, you have to run the all the indexes to look for liens and judgments.  The same as we do for a current owner.  The only difference I see is that you aren't giving them a copy of the current deed (you still have to find it to do the rest) or tax information.  However, you may still have to look at the auditors records to get the basic information you need to find when they took title.

To me this is a way of saying "Do a current owner, but charge me less."  We still do current owner searches and bill accordingly.

Best,
Robert A. Franco
SOURCE OF TITLE