Looking Ahead at the Registry of Deeds

Last Thursday (May 14, 2020) the Chief Justices of the Supreme Judicial, Appeals and Trial Courts issued a letter on "the path forward during the pandemic." Here are some of the things that stood out when I read it:

• "We anticipate that our courthouses will likely remain physically closed in June . . ."
• "We expect that courthouses will physically reopen this summer, but only in stages and only for certain matters that require in-person appearances.
• "We hope that in September, if schools reopen, we will once again begin to conduct jury trials."

And regarding the rapid progress the courts have made in shifting to video conferences in place of in-person hearings, the Chief Justices wrote, "even when this pandemic is behind us, we do not believe we will or should go back to doing things as we did in February." 

The reason I mention all of this in a post about future operations at the Registry of Deeds is that this Registry of Deeds is physically located within a courthouse and is therefore dependent on the courthouse being open for us to be open to the public.

That said, even when the courthouse reopens to the public, I'll borrow a line from the justices and say we will not go back to doing things as we did before the pandemic struck. Here are some of the things that are likely even after the building reopens to the public:

•  Walk in recordings will be limited to dropping documents at the entrance to the registry
• Customer will not be permitted near the section of the registry counter where the recording terminals are located
• For registered land, we will still require you to email us the documents you intend to register for pre-approval before we will accept the documents being dropped off
• Same for plans
• There will be no real estate closings within the registry space (this was going to be the case anyway since there is no such space in the new registry)
• There will be no opportunity to do research within the registry space (this was going to be case anyway since there is no such space in the new registry)
• There will be no public computers for pre-recording rundowns. The building has WiFi so if a rundown is important, bring your laptop and do it from outside the registry

In addition to the above, we are still researching how to safely provide some of our other services such as providing over sized prints of previously recorded plans; administering oaths of office; and allowing corporate certificates to be sent directly to this office. 

In the future, as now, we hope to use the telephone, email and our website to provide customer service rather than doing it in person. 

That's it for now. I'll provide more updates as they become available.