Recently I was asked whether or not a buyer should pay for title insurance in addition to his other closing costs. My answer was an emphatic yes, and here are my reasons.

A "chain of title" is the written evidence of transfers of ownership for a particular parcel of property. It is typically maintained by the Clerk of Superior Court for the county in which the property is located, and is evidence of ownership.

The chain of title most often will look like a list of the deeds drawn up at each sale of the property and when they were recorded. In addition, when we take out a home loan in Georgia, we usually sign a "security deed," in which we post the real estate as collateral for the debt. Those deeds are in the chain of title as well. Because being able to prove who owns which house and who has an interest in any piece of real estate is so important, the business of verifying ownership is vital to the purchase and sale of real estate.

Normally, when you buy a piece of real estate, you hire an attorney to perform a title examination and to report back to you that the seller does own the house you intend to buy. Furthermore, the seller will be required to sign a statement at closing affirming that there are no known challenges to his ownership of the property. But even so, there could be problems down the road that even an experienced title examiner could not find.

These problems are called "defects" in title and can pop up anytime during the ownership of the property. Here are some examples:

• Errors in the recording of legal documents. Let's say your builder refuses to pay for the roofing contractor, and the roofer files a mechanic's lien on your house before you buy it. But the clerk at the courthouse files the lien under Lot 81 instead of Lot 18 in your subdivision. And because there is no Lot 81, the error never comes up. Then later, the roofer gets a judgement against your property based on the mechanic's lien, which was properly recorded but misfiled by the courthouse personnel. It's a valid judgement. You would have to pay, and hope to collect later from the builder, now long gone.

• Forged deeds or wills. You might end up buying your next house from an estate, in which the executor is named under a forged will. Your executor's deed is later challenged by a disgruntled family member who wants the house back. You would have to pay to defend your ownership and still might lose the house. And you would still be personally liable for any sums still owed on the mortgage.

• Liens for unpaid local or federal taxes. You are buying a house, and your attorney checks out the chain of title through the date of all recorded documents, which was yesterday. You are scheduled to close today at 4 p.m. At noon, an official with the Internal Revenue Service files an entirely legal $100,000 lien for income taxes against your seller, and gets the lien recorded as it is filed. Your seller and your attorney are both unaware of the tax lien. You buy the house at 4 p.m. You also bought the lien, and your house is now at risk of being sold to satisfy the income tax bill.

Title insurance is a product designed to protect the policy holder against just these types of unseen challenges to title.

Lenders believe so strongly in title insurance that they will never close any loan unless they are covered. That's why you will find that the "lender's title insurance" coverage is part of every loan's closing costs. But that policy does not protect you, the owner.

For your own level of protection, you need "owner's title insurance." This is typically offered to the purchaser at the time of issuance of the lender's policy. It usually costs about two dollars per thousand dollars of purchase price, and that is a one-time only premium.

Once paid, the policy protects you and your heirs for as long as you own the property. In addition, your owner's title insurance policy virtually guarantees the insurability of the title when you get ready to sell the property.