Request By:
Donna B. Yenowine, Attorney
Small Business Administration
Room 188
600 Dr. Martin Luther King Drive
Louisville, Kentucky 40202-2254
Opinion
Opinion By: Frederick J. Cowan, Attorney General; Ross T. Carter, Assistant Attorney General
You have asked whether the filing of a UCC continuation statement extends the security interest from the date of filing the continuation statement or from the date of expiration of the original perfected security interest.
Your correspondence includes a letter from Susan Leavenworth, former counsel for the SBA. Ms. Leavenworth presented the question from the standpoint of an amendment to KRS 355.9-403 that was effective March 31, 1988. Actually the cited amendment was enacted in 1986 (Acts 1986, c. 118, § 76). The amendment simply removed the distinct treatment accorded financing statements that have a stated maturity date and made them subject to the same provisions applicable to financing statements without a stated maturity date. The provision that answers your question remains unchanged. It says:
Upon timely filing of the continuation statement, the effectiveness of the original statement is continued for five (5) years after the last date to which the filing was effective whereupon it lapses in the same manner as provided in subsection (2) of this section unless another continuation statement is filed prior to such lapse.
KRS 355.9-403(3). This provision makes it clear that the effect of the continuation statement runs from the date on which the security interest would have lapsed, rather than from the date on which the continuation statement is filed.