The Title Examiner Found My Turning Plan Beneath A Missing Attachment

The man in the hard hat measured the passage with a wheel.

"Careful at the bend," I called from my loading door.

He looked up. "Are you moving out before Monday?"

"I live here."

He checked his sheet.

"We're supposed to fence this for staging. Exclusive access."

I asked whose project it was. He gave me the name Wren Court Development and pointed toward a vacant lot beyond the condos. Then he called someone and packed up his wheel.

I wrote down the time.

My crate went to storage that morning. The dispatcher emailed a $420 diversion charge. Secure storage would cost $120 a night. Redelivery would add $180.

I put those figures on a clean sheet beside Clifford's $350 demand.

Then I called a title office in Evanston and described my packet.

"Does the drawing have a recording reference?" a woman asked.

"It has one on the cover page."

"Bring the whole packet. People always leave the drawing at home."

Her name was Hyejin Park.

She was forty-two and Korean American, and she greeted me with a skeptical squint that made me check whether I had come on the wrong day.

"You brought originals?"

"And copies."

"Good. I'll work from the copies."

Her desk held no family photos. There were rulers, binder clips, and a small lamp aimed straight down at a pile of documents.

I told her what Clifford had said.

"I examine title," she said. "I can trace the record. You'll need a lawyer for what to do about him."

"I need to know what I have first."

She nodded and gave me a written quote of $475 for a rush search and report. I signed it.

She laid the plan beside the legal description of my lot.

"These match," she said. "And this is recorded as part of the grant, not just an old sketch someone kept."

"My mother called it the turning promise."

Hyejin leaned closer.

"That's a useful name. The grant includes this turning area. See the letters? They match the corners on the plan."

She read slowly. The passage served the carriage-house parcel. The right passed with that land to later owners. It covered entry on foot and with vehicles, including deliveries, with room to turn at the loading doors.

"So it isn't Clifford's favor."

"It appears to be a right attached to your property. Let me finish the chain."

I sat in the waiting room while she searched. Through the window, I watched people hurry past with collars turned up against the November wind.

My phone rang twice. Clifford left one message asking when I intended to pay. My client left another asking whether her map had arrived.

I called the client first.

"It's in secure storage," I said. "I'm paying the extra charges. Your map hasn't been left on a truck."

There was a pause.

"Thank you for telling me before I had to ask."

Hyejin called me back to her desk an hour later.

She had found the deed that created the access right in 1926. She had also found the condo declaration, filed decades later. It listed the passage as common property, subject to existing recorded rights.

"They own the ground," she said. "That doesn't make your recorded right disappear."

Then she turned her monitor toward me.

"This is why your timing matters."

Two weeks earlier, a memorandum of an exclusive-use agreement had been recorded against the condo property. It named Wren Court Development. Clifford had signed for the association.

The full agreement was not attached. The memorandum referred to a survey labeled Exhibit C.

"That attachment isn't here," Hyejin said.

"Could that be normal?"

"Sometimes a short public notice points to a longer private contract. But look at the area it describes."

It covered the rear passage and my turning space.

My mouth went dry.

"He can't give them exclusive use if I need to get through."

"That's the conflict your lawyer needs to see."

Hyejin printed the memorandum. She requested the recorded images for the older grant, including every attachment. The clerk's index had put the drawing several pages after the text.

"Missing attachments are patient," she said. "They wait until someone needs them."

I placed a little blue flag beside the old plan number.

"That's where the tear started," I said.

She glanced at me, then at my pasted sleeve.

"You repair paper?"

"Usually people want me to hide the join."

"This time, keep it visible."

Before I left, an email arrived from the development company's closing lawyer. Hyejin had asked for the referenced survey with my written permission.

She read the reply twice.

"They say Mr. Moss certified that no neighboring parcel held delivery rights through this passage."