Entity owners: who actually signs

1 · Learn the move · Comparison matrix

When the owner of record is a company, the person on the phone is the least reliable part of the file. The registered agent receives papers and signs nothing. The organiser who filed the articles may have left in year two. The annual report may name a manager who has since died, and the company may be dissolved on the state's books while its land sits untouched. None of those documents alone tells you who may sign a deed, and the one that governs it, the operating agreement, is private. A comparison matrix makes the disagreement visible: people down the side, documents across the top, each cell quoting what that document says about that person, with its date. The model never resolves the matrix into a signer. The title company will ask for authority documents, and counsel reads them.

Build a matrix: every person named in any document down the side, each document across the top with its date. Each cell quotes what that document says that person is, or reads 'not named'. Do not tell me who can sign. After the matrix, list the documents a title company would need to see, as [NEEDS: ...].