Search for liens

Liens are a critical component of business due diligence, especially for lending and financing decisions. Middesk’s Lien Search product enables you to search for Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) liens, Federal tax liens, and State tax liens associated with a business.

Understanding a business’s lien status helps you:

• Assess the financial obligations and encumbrances on a business
• Identify secured creditors who have priority claims on business assets
• Evaluate credit risk during underwriting processes
• Make informed lending and financing decisions

Types of liens

Middesk searches for three primary types of liens:

• UCC Liens, Uniform Commercial Code filings (UCC-1) that secure interests in personal property and assets
• Federal Tax Liens, Claims filed by the IRS for unpaid federal taxes
• State Tax Liens, Claims filed by state tax agencies for unpaid state taxes

People tax liens

Middesk can also search for tax liens on individuals associated with a business. Request a people_tax_liens order on a business to trigger a search for tax liens on the submitted and/or retrieved people associated with the business. At the account level, you can configure the search to include submitted people, retrieved people, or both.

Once completed, the Person object includes a liens array of details with the same structure as business liens.

How to search for liens

Searching for liens requires that you first create a business, wait for verification to complete, then order a liens search for that business. Middesk performs business verification after the business is created, which establishes the business identity and is required before ordering additional products like liens searches.

$
curl -X POST https://api.middesk.com/v1/businesses \
>
  -u <YOUR_API_KEY>: \
>
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
>
  --data '{
>
    "name": "Example Business Inc",
>
    "addresses": [
>
      {
>
        "address_line1": "123 Main Street",
>
        "city": "San Francisco",
>
        "state": "CA",
>
        "postal_code": "94105"
>
      }
>
    ],
>
    "tin": {
>
      "number": "123456789"
>
    }
>
  }'

1
{
2
  "id": "2c6bcf81-21c8-4f71-b6c0-1e738338dadf",
3
  "object": "business",
4
  "name": "Example Business Inc",
5
  "status": "pending",
6
  ...
7
}

$
curl -X POST https://api.middesk.com/v1/businesses/{business_id}/orders \
>
  -u <YOUR_API_KEY>: \
>
  -H "Accept: application/json" \
>
  --data '{
>
    "package": "liens",
>
    "subproducts": ["ucc_documents"]
>
  }'

Understanding lien results

The liens response contains detailed information about each lien found associated with the business.

Lien object structure

Each lien object includes the following key attributes:

Understanding lien status is essential for risk assessment:

1
{
2
  "object": "list",
3
  "data": [
4
    {
5
      "id": "lien_00000000000000000000000000",
6
      "type": "ucc",
7
      "state": "CA",
8
      "status": "open",
9
      "filing_date": "2023-01-15",
10
      "lapse_date": "2028-01-15",
11
      "file_number": "2023-0123456",
12
      "debtors": [
13
        {
14
          "name": "Example Business Inc",
15
          "address": {
16
            "address_line1": "123 Main Street",
17
            "city": "San Francisco",
18
            "state": "CA",
19
            "postal_code": "94105"
20
          }
21
        }
22
      ],
23
      "secured_parties": [
24
        {
25
          "name": "First National Bank",
26
          "address": {
27
            "address_line1": "456 Bank Street",
28
            "city": "San Francisco",
29
            "state": "CA",
30
            "postal_code": "94104"
31
          }
32
        }
33
      ],
34
      "collateral": {
35
        "description": "All assets and equipment",
36
        "type": "Blanket"
37
      },
38
      "documents": [
39
        {
40
          "type": "UCC-1",
41
          "description": "Initial Filing",
42
          "url": "https://..."
43
        }
44
      ],
45
      "negative_pledge": false
46
    }
47
  ]
48
}

Review tasks

Lien searches generate review tasks that summarize findings. These tasks appear in the Business object’s review.tasks array.

liens review task

Identify liens associated with the business.

For people-related lien review tasks (people_liens), see People verification review tasks.