When the 2010 Amendments to Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code became effective on July 1, 2013 in most jurisdictions, the majority of enacting states began accepting the new amended Article 9 (AA9) forms. UCC filers should, however, be aware of a few exceptions and quirks in some jurisdictions.
Currently, each of the fifty states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico fall into one of three categories:
- Accepts only the new AA9 forms and rejects any previous versions (vast majority of states);
- Accepts old UCC forms and new AA9 forms/unknown when or if they will require new form only (CO counties, DE, FL, HI, MD, NJ); or
- Does not accept new AA9 forms/accepts only old (RA9) UCC forms:
- Alabama: Article 9 amendments pending with proposed effective date of July 1, 2014;
- Arizona: Article 9 amendments legislation pending;
- California: Enacted the Article 9 Amendments with a delayed effective date of July 1, 2014;
- New York: Article 9 amendments legislation pending;
- Oklahoma: Article 9 amendments legislation pending;
- Puerto Rico: Despite Revised Article 9 and the Article 9 Amendments becoming effective on January 17, 2013, the Department of State has not updated its procedures and still requires signatures on UCC filings; and
- Vermont: Article 9 amendments legislation pending.
The recommended International Association of Commercial Administrators (IACA) model AA9 forms have a revision date of 4/20/11 at the bottom of the form. These forms should be used only in states where the amendments have been enacted. The forms can be downloaded from the Article 9 Forms page of the COGENCY GLOBAL INC. website.
Jurisdictions with noteworthy idiosyncrasies regarding filing acceptance related to forms include:
- Louisiana accepts both old and new forms, but charges a higher fee for filing the old form.
- Some counties in South Carolina have rejected the new AA9 forms due to lack of knowledge of the Article 9 amendments being enacted.
- The South Dakota Secretary of State requires the new AA9 forms; however, they continue to require a tax identification number for debtors. The state will reject the filing if this is not included. Since there is no field for this information on the UCC1 form, it is suggested that the I.D. number be placed in the optional filer field (Field 8) on a UCC1 form.
- Wyoming Secretary of State has a maximum allowable collateral description of 300 characters. Collateral descriptions exceeding 300 characters must be submitted on diskette or CD containing the collateral description only in a text file format. Unacceptable formats, resulting in rejection of the filing, include Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files, scanned images or Excel files.
For details on the forms each jurisdiction is currently accepting, view COGENCY GLOBAL INC.'s chart, UCC Form Acceptance Under Article 9 Amendments.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and should not be considered, or relied upon, as legal advice.