Opinion ID: 2632292
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: How the six-year statute of limitations applies to the deed

Text: Because the deed of trust failed to specify a maturity date, Holta argues, the court should have applied AS 34.20.150(a) to determine when the six-year statute of limitations began running on the deed of trust. This provision states: The date of maturity of an instrument creating a lien upon real property is considered to be 10 years from the date of the instrument, unless (1) the period of the instrument is disclosed by the terms of the instrument; or (2) another instrument extending the period of the first instrument or a memorandum of payment of the first instrument is recorded. But Certified Financial argues that the Cooper Deed of Trust incorporated the terms of the Cooper Note, which in turn specified that [a]ll sums owed by the undersigned must be paid on or before November 15, 1989. Certified Financial reasons that even though the Cooper Note went unrecorded, because the two documents were contemporaneously executed, the deed should be deemed to satisfy AS 34.20.150(a)'s requirement of disclosing the deed's maturity date  as reflected in the note. To support this argument, Certified Financial emphasizes that when a promissory note and deed are executed simultaneously, they generally must be read together as one document to ascertain the parties' intent. [5] But we are not concerned here with determining the original contracting parties' intent. Instead, we must determine whether AS 34.20.150(a) allows its ten-year default maturity date to be overridden by a maturity date that can be found only in an unrecorded note that the deed merely incorporates by reference. This determination hinges on AS 34.20.150(a)'s purpose  to provide subsequent purchasers with record knowledge and reasonable certainty regarding the vitality of liens recorded against the property. Alaska Statute 34.20.150(a) attains this purpose by establishing a ten-year default maturity date; the statute allows no exception to the default date unless a different date is expressly stated in either the recorded lien itself [6] or some other recorded document that extends the lien. [7] Given the statute's underlying purpose, we conclude that its ten-year default maturity date cannot be overridden by a deed of trust provision incorporating the terms of a contemporaneously executed note unless the note itself is also recorded. Here, the Cooper Deed's default maturity date is August 1997  ten years after Cooper recorded the deed. Neither the unrecorded note nor the later unrecorded extension amendment override this date. Under AS 34.20.150(a), then, the six-year statute of limitations to foreclose on the deed began to run on the August 1997 default maturity date and does not expire until August 2003.