Ohio Assignment of Mortgage (Entity)

When a bank, a limited liability company, or another organization transfers a mortgage it holds on Ohio land, the organization itself cannot sign; a person signs for it. This Ohio Assignment of Mortgage (Entity) form is built around that fact: one entity assignor, one authorized signer, and an acknowledgment certificate whose name line carries the signer's title and the entity's name in the words of the Ohio Revised Code short form for the entity's type.

One entity, one authorized signer

Section 1 identifies the assignor by its exact legal name, its type of entity, its state of organization, and its mailing address, and opens with fixed text stating that the entity holds the mortgage and executes the instrument through the authorized signer named in the signature block. Nothing about the entity's type is preprinted, so the form carries a state-chartered bank, an Ohio limited liability company, a Delaware corporation, or a partnership. The signature block under the ASSIGNOR heading holds the signer's signature, printed name, date, and title, with an On behalf of line for the entity's name, and Section 6 carries the signer's representation that he or she holds that title and is authorized to execute the assignment. Ohio's entity statutes are where that authority lives: Section 1701.64 gives a corporation's officers the authority its directors determine unless the articles or regulations provide otherwise, and Section 1706.18 limits the power to bind a limited liability company to persons authorized under its operating agreement, the Revised Limited Liability Company Act, or other law.

The certificate follows the entity's type

Ohio prints its acknowledgment short forms in Section 147.55, and the forms for a corporation in division (B), a limited liability company in division (C), and a partnership in division (D) each describe the acknowledging person differently: an officer or agent of a corporation on behalf of the corporation, a member or managing member of a limited liability company on behalf of the company, a partner or agent on behalf of a partnership. Every one of those forms opens with the same sentence, The foregoing instrument was acknowledged before me this (date) by, and the form prints that shared opening; the name line beneath it receives the signer's name and capacity in the words of the division that fits the entity. The guide prints all three forms, and the completed example shows the limited liability company version filled in, for a manager signing on behalf of the company.

What passes to the assignee

The operative paragraph assigns, transfers, and sets over to the assignee all of the assignor's right, title, and interest in the mortgage, together with the promissory note and the other indebtedness it secures, and restates the Section 5301.31 rule that an assignment carries the lien and all interest in the land described in the mortgage. The assignee's current mailing address, which Sections 5301.31 and 5301.32 provide that every assignment contains, has its own blank. A separate section identifies any earlier assignment of record under which the entity holds, so a mortgage that passed from its originator to the assignor by a recorded assignment shows an unbroken chain to the new holder, and an entity that is itself the original mortgagee enters None.

Recording with the county recorder

The instrument is the separate instrument of assignment under Section 5301.32, acknowledged before a notary public or another officer named in Section 5301.01 and recorded in the county recorder's official records at the fee charged for a deed. In a county that keeps sectional indexes, Section 5301.46 calls for the permanent parcel number and the municipal corporation or township in a separate instrument of assignment, and the property section carries lines for both beside the legal description copied from the mortgage. Section 5301.32 also provides that a signature on an assignment may be a facsimile, a provision written with institutional holders that sign in volume in mind. The form is laid out to the standard format of Section 317.114, with its three inch first-page top margin and twelve point type, and carries the preparer statement Section 317.111 requires.

The package contains three items: the fillable Assignment of Mortgage (Entity) form, a completed example filled in for an Ohio limited liability company assigning a Montgomery County mortgage to a corporate loan servicer, and the guide, which covers every section, the three entity acknowledgment forms, and recording county by county. Both this description and that guide are general descriptions of the form and of the Ohio statutes behind it, not legal advice.