Request By:
Mr. Mike Jones
President
Kentucky County Clerk's Association
Brandenburg, Kentucky 40108
Opinion
Opinion By: David L. Armstrong, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
House Bill 780 (1984 Regular Session) amended KRS 387.590, relating to the appointment of guardians and conservators. KRS 387.500, et seq., deals with the guardianship and conservatorship for disabled persons. House Bill 780 specifically amended KRS 387.590(8), which now reads:
"(8) The judgment of partial disability or disability and the order of appointment shall be filed in the district court. The judgment shall be indexed by the county clerk in the book in which notices of actions and encumbrances are indexed. Unless such judgment is filed and indexed, it shall not constitute notice to any subsequent bona fide purchaser for value, mortgagee, or encumbrancer. "
You point out that the concern of the county clerks of Kentucky is that the judgment of partial disability or disability is being filed in district courts, "and they (court clerks) in turn bring the judgment to the clerks' offices to index for no fee." (Emphasis added).
You believe that such judgment should be filed and indexed in your office. Your specific question is:
"Can county clerks legally require judgments of partial disability or disability to be legally filed in their offices with the appropriate fee stated above accompanying them?"
You feel that the proper fee for filing and indexing such judgments is five dollars ($5) as a miscellaneous filing and one and one-half dollars ($1.50) for each page exceeding three pages.
In OAG 84-308, copy enclosed, we concluded that, reading KRS 387.590(8) as a whole, the statute requires that a certified copy of such judgment of disability be filed and indexed in the county clerk's office in order to afford notice to any subsequent bona fide purchaser for value, mortgagee, or encumbrancer. We said that the county clerk must index the judgment of disability in the county clerk's book containing notices of lis pendens and encumbrances. See
Powell v. Winchester Bank, Ky.App., 551 S.W.2d 820 (1977) 822.
Now, concerning the proper county clerk's fee for so filing and indexing a certified copy of such disability judgment, it is our opinion that the proper fee for the county clerks to accompany such filing and indexing is five dollars ($5) for filing miscellaneous documents for which no specific fee is set, where the record does not exceed three pages. Where such document exceeds three pages, for each additional page the clerk's fee is one and one-half dollars ($1.50). Such fee is authorized in KRS 64.012.
Statutory services for which no fee is provided by statute is not compensable.
Logan County v. Russell, 203 Ky. 592, 262 S.W. 953 (1924). Such fee must be specifically provided by statute. That is the case here. KRS 64.012 specifically provides for such fee under the language "Filing miscellaneous documents for which no specific fee is set." See also § 106, Kentucky Constitution, requiring that fees of county officers be regulated by law.
As relates to a poor person's not being charged with court costs, including an officer's fees, see KRS 453.190 and 387.760.