The Marshall County Recorder’s Office may soon allow certain documents to be filed electronically. The county council gave its support Monday to a contract with e-recording provider Simplifile.
Recorder Marlene Mahler says the service would be provided at no cost to the county. “The title company or the bank or whomever, they send the documents to Simplifile, and it all goes through them,” she explains. “They have an account with Simplifile with the money, and then Simplifile sends it on to us. They charge the customer $10 to do this via the Internet, and so they pay them.”
She says the addition of e-recording should make things easier for her and her staff. “When Simplifile fills out the paperwork to send it in, they do the indexing,” she says. “They fill in the name in the slot where I would fill it in, if I got the paper, where we would type it in. That’s already filled in. They have our software. It automatically goes right into our software. So it takes my girls a lot less time to index the document because it’s automatically done.”
Mahler hopes to implement the system in her office by April 1, but she also plans to roll out the system to the auditor’s and assessor’s offices by the end of the year. “Right now, I just want to start with the mortgages and the releases, which is just in my office, get my staff used to it first and let the other offices see how it works,” she says, “and then, eventually, go to them and see if they want to get involved in the deeds, as well.”
She notes that Marshall County is one of only 30 in the state that does not provide e-recording services. The request now goes to the county commissioners for their official approval.
