Signature Block Proof Made Easy

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hi I'm Annie Fitzsimmons I'm your Washington Realtors Legal Hotline lawyer today we're talking about signature blocks now signature blocks may not sound like a fun topic to you but let me tell you if you don't have the correct signature block you don't have a binding agreement and too many brokers have never really thought about what their clients signature block should look like because for generations we've had primarily in that least in the residential industry we've had primarily human beings purchasing property but more and more in today's world we have entities buying and selling property and we also have a human being signing for property on behalf of another we're going to talk about all of those different configurations of buyers and sellers in today's video because it's important that you understand the significance of who actually signs the contract that you've prepared and that you want to be made binding by that signature because if we don't have the right signature for the actual party to the contract then we don't have a binding agreement so what am I really talking about here let's start with the preliminary commitment for title and you have probably heard me say countless times that when you take a listing the very first thing you should do after you take the listing is order the preliminary commitment for title and that's still a true statement and as soon as you get the preliminary commitment for title you need to open it and you need to read it and there are a variety of things you're going to look for on that preliminary commitment for title but the thing we're talking about today is who owns the property who is identified as the fee simple owner of the property and let's just say that the fee simple owner of the property is the Mickey Mouse family trust now a trust always has a date associated with it we'll get to that in a minute but for the purposes of our story here let's say that you've already taken this listing and you met with Mickey Mouse and Mickey Mouse hired you to sell his property and you prepare the listing agreement and Mickey Mouse signed the listing agreement Mickey Mouse that's all it says Mickey Mouse and now two days later three days later you receive the preliminary commitment for title and you look at the first page and you see that the feasable owner of the property is actually the Mickey Mouse family trust is that significant is it significant that the owner of the property is the Mickey Mouse family trust and then the signature that you have says Mickey Mouse and the answer is absolutely 100% yes that's hugely significant because as it stands you don't have a signature on the listing agreement from the owner of the property why because the individual Mickey Mouse cannot bind the Mickey Mouse family trust by the signature Mickey Mouse...