When you purchased your new home you were required by the bank to purchase title insurance. Those of you who had never owned a home before wanted to know what it was, and why you were required to purchase it?

Title Insurance protects your home and the land that it sits on against a number of things, most of which occurred in the past, before you ever thought about the home.

Are you insured? If you closed on your home with a mortgage loan, yes, you have a policy that protects your mortgage, but you may not have a policy that protects you.

What does this policy protect you and your lender against?

Your title insurance protects your property from the following possibilities:

• Clerical Error made at the courthouse when an earlier deed was recorded.
• Instrument signed by a minor.
• Improper legal description.
• Forged signatures.
• A married signer who represented himself as single.
• Title taken as a result of an improperly probated will.
• Confusion of title resulting from similar names.
• A deed signed by someone who claimed to own the property, but in fact did not.
• A deed signed by someone mentally incompetent.
• A deed signed by someone whose power of attorney had expired.
• Outright falsification of records.
• Problems associated with a will: Adoption or birth of a child after the date of a will, failure to probate a will, improved interpretation of a will.
• The appearance of a missing heir.

Are you under insured? Does your title insurance cover your total investment? Do you have a title insurance policy that covers only the amount of your lot and not the total cost of your lot and home? If so, you might want to look into the cost of increasing your policy limits.

If you purchased an existing home, the chances are that the seller of that home provided you with a title insurance policy in the amount of the purchase price of the home. Check your personal records from your real estate transaction to be sure.

If you built a new home on your own land, there's the possibility that your title insurance policy only covers the amount of the value of the land, if you had one to begin with when you purchased your land.

To find out if you are under insured, pull out all of your records from your real estate transaction. You need to look for a letter size document that says "Title Insurance Policy" on the front of it. Under the front cover is the actual policy. It will tell you on the first page of the policy the amount of coverage you have. If you need to increase your coverage, let us give you a quote.

Steven Lulich P.A. | Phone 772-589-5500 | E-Mail: steve@lulich.com
Offices in Sebastian, Florida