In order to get my mom’s home under my name, our mortgage company needs a copy of the deed. It would be great if I could find a piece of paper that said “DEED” across the top, but with these kinds of transactions it doesn’t always seem that simple.
So what exactly am I looking for? I’m digging through piles of paperwork. I did come across an Indenture between the prior owner (grantor) and my mother (grantee). Is this what I’m looking for? Its a few pages long but I don’t see the word deed anywhere within the document.
If you can’t find it, the county circuit court has a copy of it in their Land Records. Your mom was the grantee on the deed; whoever she bought it from is the grantor.
Yup and you should have your address and APN (or whatever they refer to as the county coding number for your property taxes) handy to facilitate locating it. Really it’s kind of silly for them to request it from you, the title company that’s handling the title insurance should be able to produce one for them rather quickly and free of charge.
I don’t know what Pennsylvania practice is, but in New York virtually every deed I’ve seen or prepared is identified as an “Indenture,” and doesn’t use the word deed (except sometimes as an identifier of the type of pre-printed form in small print in an upper corner). A common form of New York deed can be seen here (pdf file).
If the document you have is something like that, you probably have found the deed.