In 2010 a series of amendments were proposed for Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code. Knowing it would take time for the individual state legislatures to pass these changes, a goal was set for the amendments to be enacted on July 1st, 2013. Forty four states plus the District of Columbia met that date. New York did not. And a year later when another 4 enacted, New York still failed to pass any of the amendments.
Finally on December 17th, 2014, New York State enacted some of the amendments. But, unlike every other state, they omitted certain key provisions and one of those resulted in New York being the only state still using forms dating back to the Revision of 2001.
A major change enacted in 2001 was that the only filing required when filing against a state created entity was to file in the state of formation. This was a major change from the prior rule which required filings in every jurisdiction where the debtor had collateral. To emphasize that new rule, fields on the UCC1 were created to indicate type of entity, state of formation and ID number, if any. Those fields were 1e, 1f and 1g and the final forms were dated 2002.
To further emphasize the new rule, failure to provide that information was a listed reason for rejection. Still some states started to not require those fields to be filed in and it raised the question that if a state accepted a form without that information, was it an effective filing?
To eliminate any concern, the 2010 Amendments eliminated those reasons for rejection under Section 9-516(b)(5)(C). And with that elimination, new UCC1 forms (including revisions to all other UCC forms) were redrafted eliminating fields 1e, 1f and 1g with final dating of 2011.
Well, along comes New York State. They finally enact the amendments, but for reasons unknown it does not eliminate that section as a reason to reject. The result is that the entity information is still required and the 2002 forms need to be used.
The current situation is that New York State is the only state using the 2002 dated forms which create other issues based upon the amendments they did enact. And with the current legislative session concluded with no new business until January, 2016, nothing will change in the near future.
WARNING: If you submit one of the new forms to New York, it will be rejected.
