Helpful strangers, yay!

Today’s main project was legal paperwork – starting the process to get R’s name off the title of my house and (more important for him, of course) getting his name off my mortgage. Right now it’s hard for him to apply for credit for his business, because it shows him owing on the mortgage (and, hmm, the home equity line of credit as well – I should do something about that too).

So I went to the courthouse to ask how to do it. I lucked out – the woman who stands at the entrance to the court side of the building offered not only to tell me how to do what I needed to do, but actually did most of it for me. She walked me down to the archives, looked up my case number, looked up my file, and took me to the counter to get a certified copy of the paperwork.

Meanwhile, the woman at the deeds office had suggested that I could ask a title company for the form I needed for the title part of it, so I went there next. A title officer looked up the legal description of my property, then gave me two copies of the deed form, then told me how to fill it out. For free! So R. will get it notarized when he signs it, then I’m supposed to take it back to the courthouse, where they “record” it. And then I can send it to the bank and hope they’ll just take his name off the mortgage. (The alternative is to refinance it in my name, but I don’t want to do that, because the interest rate on my original mortage is super low.)

Anyway, between the courthouse woman and the title company guy, it was really nice to have people be so helpful!