Under existing law, when a deed, mortgage or other typical real estate document is presented to the Register of Deeds (“ROD”) for recording, it is accompanied with a recording fee equivalent to $11 for the first page and $2 for each additional page. This will change under the new law.

Under existing law, when a deed, mortgage or other typical real estate document is presented to the Register of Deeds ("ROD") for recording, it is accompanied with a recording fee equivalent to $11 for the first page and $2 for each additional page. This will change under the new law on June 25, 2010. RODs have explained for years it is quite common for a document to be presented for recording with a fee that was improperly calculated. Even if the deed's recording fee is $13, yet is presented with $14, it will be rejected for recording in most Wisconsin counties. The RODs simply do not make change and will not bill the submitter in the event the recording fee is short by $1 or is over by $1. This is perhaps the number one reason documents are rejected when presented for recording. The problem is typically created because the transaction's closer does not always know how many pages will be contained in each document to be recorded. The closer typically calculates the recording fees in advance of the closing. Simply attaching an extra page to the deed at the closing table, say, for a long legal description, will cause all of the closing documents to be rejected since it's inevitable that the recording fees could be off by a couple bucks. The new law fixes this issue because the new recording fee structure is based upon a flat fee per document and not a fee per page. Therefore, the closer would only need to know how many documents are to be recorded and not how many pages are contained in each. The new recording fee is $25 per document in Wisconsin. But there is a catch. The law provides that certain counties may increase the fee to $30 per document if that county is in the process of redacting social security numbers from older documents being scanned and placed in the RODs online software. If this is the case, the law provides that the $30 will be reverted to $25 by January 1, 2015, or sooner depending on the status of the redaction of social security numbers. As of the writing of this article, all Wisconsin Counties have elected to charge $30 effective June 25, 2010.