Good question on who is to blame for our no finds or omissions.  I searched a name this week that  I will always remember:  Glenn Erik Newbury-Smith.  I keyed in: Newbury-Smith nothing in the index, I keyed in Smith, Glenn and outconveyances for Smith,Glenn Erik Newbury came up.  I then keyed in Newbury, Glenn and nothing came up.  I was going to quit there but I decided to key in Newbury.  When I weeded through all the newbury's there were 2 deeds of trust indexed under Newbury, Smith Glenn Erik.  Almost missed them. 

I did further research of the Standard Rules of indexing for NC and found that hyphenated names should be indexed as:  Smith, Glenn Erik Newbury or Newbury, Glenn Erik Smith. Therefore, Newbury,Smith Glenn Erik is indexed incorrectly.  (I used to be a Southern Bell Telephone directory assistance operator.  I know indexing rules.)  Now when we searched by the books and not the computer, this would have stared me in the face and I would have seen it immediately.  It is harder to search by computers but we have no choice.  I think this is why claims are so much higher now than ever before.

Another little trick for safety nets, is to look at the Request for Notices.  It is a document of little importance in NC that alerts abstractors that a lender is requesting notification in case a Deed of Trust one or two tiers up from them goes into foreclosure.  One was in my chain of outconveyances but I noticed the Deed of Trust it listed was not in my index.  I found that the clerk entering the D/T had added an extra letter at the front of the last name so it was indexed in under the P's instead of the L's.

I'm telling you that even the clerks of days gone by were more efficient and had more pride in their work than today's work force.  Title searching in the late 70's through the mid 90's used to be more reliable because everyone searched more throughly and took more time to do the search and actually counted on the fact that all involved, clerks, banks, attorneys, and title searchers were doing their jobs with a sense of accountablility to each other and to the public which they served.  I blame the banks for all of this turnaround time putting us all at risk to hurry up.  When I see a deed of trust with a legal description of a book and page number of another deed of trust, I just shake my head and am ashamed that a bank would not even take the time to put a legal description on their product.  And, I shake my finger at the Registrar that allowed that document to be recorded.  Times change.  Sometimes not for the better.