A few years ago working behind another abstractor I discovered a mortgage that had been assigned to the wrong legal. The borrower had never owned the property and the legals were not even similar. I was working directly with the lender and contacted them.

For a year their Deed of Trust had been against the wrong property as reporter by the original abstractor. The lender was thankful we had found this error. The search they had given me was for a re-fi of the mortgage. So they quietly changed the legal in the new mortgage and just as quietly released the old one.

How tragic this might have been if this search had been for a foreclosure. As far as I know the real owner of the property never learned he had a lien against his home for a year.