New Editable Conveyancing Blanks

Editable Conveyancing Blanks (ECBs) are now available on practicelaw.

Users of the Uniform Conveyancing Blanks (UCBs), which are currently available on practicelaw as fillable PDF forms, have frequently asked about editing them. Most users seek to add signature lines or increase the space to insert information in the fields within the body of the document. Others, however, want to edit the fixed or “uniform text” to tailor it to their transaction. The text of uniform forms must remain—well—uniform, which is why the UCBs are only posted in PDF.

To meet members’ demand for editable forms and simultaneously keep the editable forms distinguishable from UCBs at a glance, MSBA has modeled the ECBs after the UCBs, but with a few important distinctions:

• The Uniform Conveyancing Blank “label” and form number that normally appear in the upper right corner of a UCB have been removed from the ECBs.
• Blank lines in the UCBs have been replaced with bolded brackets and the instructions from the UCBs have been moved into the brackets on the ECBs.
• The new forms maintain a similar numbering system, although the form numbers of the ECBs are placed in the lower left corner and have no decimal points. A 2011 ECB form, for example, is modeled after UCB form number 20.1.1.
• The ECBs are formatted in Microsoft Word with these distinctions to make it easy to tailor the ECBs to a particular transaction and to make it readily apparent to the recipient whether they are looking at an editable form (ECB) or a uniform form (UCB).

Like the UCBs, the ECBs are grouped into series.  Some are posted now and the rest are expected to be posted by mid-July.

Now users have a choice. The ECBs allow individualization without compromising the uniformity of the UCBs.
Please contact Nancy Hupp, MSBA Director of practicelaw, nhupp@mnbar.org with any questions or comments.