Request By:
Mr. Lewis P. Williams
Cumberland County Clerk
P.O. Box 147
Burkesville, Kentucky 42717
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
The problem of multiple assignments of chattel mortgages is presented in your letter, in which you request our opinion as to proper clerks' fees. It reads in part:
"Today a representative of the Cumberland Production Credit Association offered for filing and entering appropriate notations on a 'Multiple Assignment' of chattel mortgages to the Cumberland Production Credit Association. This document consisted of several pages which with filing, indexing and entering proper notations would require several hours of work. For this service he tendered his check in the amount of $6.00 and insisted that this was the correct fee.
"I do not question the adequacy of the fee for filing the assignment although it is unreal but feel that it is highly unfair and inadequate for making the notations for each chattel referred to in the instrument. Surely the law does not intend to deny reasonable compensation for making marginal notations on all of these instruments by claiming it is all one assignment and not take into consideration the additional service or transaction required by each of the affected chattels. "
As we pointed out in OAG 84-197, written to you, KRS 64.012 does not address the cluster technique. There we concluded that the fee schedule under KRS 64.012, as applied to an assignment of real estate mortgages, permits a fee of five dollars ($5) for "recording a deed of assignment of real estate mortgage. " The state tax of one dollar ($1.00), pursuant to KRS 142.010, applied to that document.
KRS 64.012, as relates to the fee for recording a single document, simply does not cover the multiple transaction. However, KRS 355.9-405 and 355.9-403(4) treat the assignment of a security interest as a separate transaction. Thus the uniform fee for filing and indexing a financing statement indicating an assignment shall be as provided in KRS 64.012. See OAG 80-250, published, Banks-Baldwin, copy enclosed, in which we concluded that the cluster technique cannot circumvent the statutory intent that each continuation statement is a separate transaction. See Budget Marketing, Inc. v. Com. Ex. Rel. Stephens, Ky., 587 S.W.2d 245 (1979). The same is true of assignments of security interest.
Thus the fee, in KRS 64.012, for filing and indexing an assignment of a financing statement is six dollars ($6.00) for each financing statement mentioned and assigned in the one instrument of assignment. The cluster technique cannot be used to circumvent the clear policy expressed in KRS 355.9-405 and 355.9-403(4).
As relates to the multiple assignment of real estate mortgages, as covered in OAG 84-197, KRS 64.012 provides one fee for recording the single instrument ($5.00). However, by the strongest implication, the clerk should, for making marginal notations on each real estate mortgage affected, collect two dollars and one-half ($2.50). OAG 84-197 is modified accordingly.