By KATHY HAGEMAN
Dickinson County public Information coordinator
ABILENE - The Dickinson County Register of Deeds office will begin accepting electronic documents before the end of October, according to Register of Deeds Rose Johns.
E-filing will be available to professional document preparers submitting deeds, releases, liens, mortgages and other real estate documents.
E-filing significantly improves efficiency and reduces the length of time needed to physically mail or deliver documents and reduces the amount of paper used for transactions.
“If someone working for a title company or bank in Kansas City wants to send us documents we won’t have to wait several days to get things back and forth in the mail,” Johns explained.
As with all work in the Register’s office, staff still have to examine the documents to ensure signatures are valid, legal descriptions are correct and all other requirements are met.
“We can accept it or reject it and send it back to the company with the reason why it was rejected. Maybe the legal description isn’t correct or they didn’t get the acknowledgement stamped,” Johns said. “We have to be very careful when looking at documents.
“The only difference is we are not typing all this information and running it through the scanner. It skips the manual part of the process,” she added.
Johns said she expects most local title companies will still bring in paper documents, but for people doing transactions who don’t live here it will be a major timesaver.
Professional document preparers using the service are charged various fees based on the service, which they pay using the E-file portal.
Rose said the E-filing system is already offered by the county’s software provider, CIC (Computer Information Concepts), which offers software for nearly every county department, so there’s no startup cost.
Address change
The Register of Deeds office no longer has a post office box, Johns said.
Anyone wanting to mail documents to the Register’s office should mail them directly to the Dickinson County Courthouse, 109 E. First Street, Suite 210, Abilene, KS 67410.