Title & Escrow Claims Guide

Do you need to stay updated on the latest developments in title insurance legislation? Find the latest insight on handling claims on land title insurance policies, closing protection letters, equitable subrogation and closing defects.

Published since 1996 and authored by well-recognized expert J. Bushnell Nielsen, The Title and Escrow Claims Guide is the preferred research tool for land title claims administrators and retained counsel. This two-volume treatise serves as a guide for resolving disputes about title insurance policies, real estate escrow and closings, and related issues involving title insurers, title agents, approved attorneys and escrowees.

The Claims Guide is also an excellent educational resource for title companies to use when training new employees in title insurance claims, underwriting and title examination. You can purchase this book in the digital, or the bundled digital & print version. The book includes form letters regularly used by title claims professionals, available in both the digital-only and digital & print versions.

For more information, please see the table of contents.

If you have any questions, please contact Carolina Perez at [email protected].

2026 Edition

• Discussion of the first major decision construing the ALTA 32 and 33 construction lien endorsements
• Analysis of the nationally-reported new decision holding that a Native American tribe may not cut off the use of roads within a reservation by people not in the tribe who bought allotment parcels
• Expanded discussion of “highest and best use” analysis in a diminution in value appraisal
• Deeper discussion of how appraisers and title insurers find the difference in value caused by easements using the Sherwood matrix
• Several excellent decisions explaining that liability under a loan policy may be extinguished even when the policy has not terminated on release of the insured mortgage
• An expanded explanation of actual and imputed knowledge, inquiry notice and several new decisions on their relation to policy exclusions
• A new thorough discussion of the Palomar premise that deeding the property does not cut off a pending claim and the problematic policy-coverage-period decisions
• Expanded description of the tasks undertaken in a policy claim investigation
• New analysis of the closing instruction assurance in the closing protection letter and the facts that must occur to bring the letter into force, including new applicable decisions
• The first decision to squarely hold that a loan policy successor insured was bound by the acts of the named insured, to void coverage
• A deeper explanation of the circumstances under which a policy or endorsement may be voided or rescinded under common law insurance applicant misrepresentation, fraudulent concealment of risk statutes and fraud in the inducement to issue a policy - including some excellent new decisions on these issues
• The first decision plainly states that the Covered Risk on title defects caused by lack of authority does not encompass acts of the insured's purported representative
• A Colorado decision holding that the reasonable expectation of a lender seeking construction lien coverage is measured by the sophistication of that entity and its counsel
• A decision holding that establishing title for an insured is not impossible when a deed has been forged, and the insured must cooperate in that effort and a new discussion of how marketable record title acts establish title rooted in a forged deed
• A new discussion of natural and equitable servitudes in relation to policy coverage
• New decisions on wire transfer fraud
• The new decision that gives an orthodox interpretation of the term Public Records and a new discussion of how to avoid a Munden-type reading of that term
• An expanded explanation of the term encroachment and how the claims person must analyze a claim labeled as being about an encroachment