The expertise of a corporate lawyer can ensure that you’re not caught unaware by any existing liens when buying and selling a business. Many of our client’s struggle with decoding the legal mumbo jumbo of lien and judgement searches, which is no surprise considering what a complicated matter it can be. A corporate lawyer such as those found at The Law Offices of Gary I Handin, P.A., can guide you through the lien and judgement search process, and how this can affect the buying and selling of your business.
What is a Lien?
While buying a business may see you embark on a new adventure, it’s important to remember that owning a business can involve incurring a lot of costs, and the person you’re buying the business from may have incurred some of these and not yet paid them off. This could be from the loan they may have taken out from the bank when they first started it or the property they bought to run the business from. To fund these ventures, some business-owners take loans from creditors, but some of these loans have liens attached to them. In short, a lien is a right, by law, that a creditor has, to someone’s property, if this person is still indebted to them.
How Would an Existing Lien Affect the Business I’m Buying?
Imagine a lien exists against on the business you are buying but you’re unaware of it. This could definitely result in your business being seized by a creditor (the lien holder) because the previous owner has fallen behind on or stopped making payments. Unfortunately, there is no protection for you against the lien holder seizing your business because a lien is an already-existing binding legal contract and agreement. You may need to pay off the amount of such a lien in order to protect your investment in the business.
Why is a Lien and Judgement Search Necessary When Buying and Selling Businesses?
Conducting a lien and judgement search involves the in-depth study, usually by a corporate lawyer, of public records on all spheres – from local and state to federal and even international – to ensure that there are no liens or judgements attached to the business that you want to buy. This also gives prospective business owners a much clearer picture of the business they’re buying.
It is not recommended that lien and judgement searches are conducted by general members of the public. The reason for this being that it not only takes a thorough understanding of the law, on multiple levels (local, state, federal, and international) to be successful but also an innate ability to make use of various search logic methods in order to come out with accurate and relevant search results for potential business owners.
Having an experienced corporate lawyer on your side to conduct and navigate lien and judgement searches when buying a business will protect you from any potential conflicts, delays, or legal complications. A trusted corporate lawyer will be able to protect your interests and make sure that the buying and selling process is as transparent as possible, and that no nasty surprises like the one just mentioned could come about.
The Law Offices of Gary I. Handin, P.A., based in Coral Springs, Florida, offers a wealth of experience when it comes to conducting lien and judgement searches. We can ensure the thorough perusal of all search results and expert advice to ensure the buying and selling of your business go according to plan.