A. The state, the public boards and commissions thereof, municipalities, districts and subdivisions of the state, including conservancy and irrigation districts, shall be entitled to have instruments affecting real estate which have been made to them as grantees or vendees, including rights-of-way for roads, easements or other instruments affecting real estate, to be duly recorded in the offices of the county clerks and ex officio recorders of the various counties in which the real estate is situated.

B. The state, the public boards or commissions thereof, municipalities, districts or subdivisions of the state, including conservancy and irrigation districts, may file the original instruments affecting such real estate with the county clerk and ex officio recorder in the county where the property is situated, and such filings shall be properly indexed by the county clerk and ex officio recorder in the county, and such filings shall have the full legal effect of recording and be legal notice of the rights of the public entities or districts in and to said rights-of-way, easements or other interests conveyed or granted by the instruments affecting the real estate.

C. The county clerks and ex officio recorders shall be paid the statutory recording fee for each instrument recorded or filed and indexed under the terms of this section.

History: Laws 1931, ch. 137, § 1; 1941 Comp., § 13-209; 1953 Comp., § 71-2-9; Laws 1961, ch. 77, § 1; 1987, ch. 233, § 1.

The 1987 amendment, effective June 19, 1987, in Subsection C, substituted "the statutory recording fee" for "one dollar or one-half the statutory recording fee whichever is greater" and made minor language changes throughout the section.

Highway grants held properly filed. — Grants to the state highway and transportation department [department of transportation] were properly filed with the full legal effect of a recording, even though the county clerk did not enter in the index book page numbers for the filings or otherwise record the grants as the clerk does for real estate transactions where the recording party is someone other than the state. Lone Butte Corp. v. State, 1991-NMSC-077, 112 N.M. 483, 816 P.2d 1105.

Warrants of employment security commission are not instruments made to commission as grantee or vendee. They are instruments made by the commission as claimant of a lien. This section does not apply to warrants of the employment security commission. 1961 Op. Att'y Gen. No. 61-51.