What is the difference between Schedule B, Part I and Part II?

Part I is Requirements — what has to happen before a policy will issue. Part II is Exceptions — what the policy will not cover once it does. The two lists are connected by a mechanism most buyers never see: an unmet requirement becomes an exception. Texas prints that connection on the form. Schedule C of Form T-7 opens by saying your policy will not cover loss, costs, attorneys' fees and expenses resulting from the following requirements that will appear as Exceptions in Schedule B of the Policy, unless you dispose of these matters to our satisfaction, before the date the Policy is issued. So a requirement nobody clears does not stop the closing. It quietly moves to the other list.

Can the standard exceptions be removed from my policy?

Some of them, on stated conditions, for a stated price. Texas Procedural Rule P-2 lets the company amend the area and boundary exception in Schedule B item 2 to read only 'shortages in area' if it accepts a survey, and on residential property the affidavit verifying an existing survey is the promulgated Form T-47, or the Form T-47.1 unsworn declaration the rule accepts in its place. Rate Rule R-16, effective 1 November 2024, prices the amendment at 5 percent of the basic premium rate on residential real property, but not less than $20, at 15 percent where the land is not residential, and at $0 on the loan policy. Removal is never automatic: ALTA Commitment Condition 5.a.ii speaks of eliminating a Part II exception with the company's written consent, so the negotiation is with the underwriter rather than the seller, and Condition 6.d adds that deleting an exception is not by itself an agreement to provide coverage beyond the policy's terms.

How long do I have to object to what is in Schedule B?

That depends on your contract, not on the commitment. TREC No. 20-19 paragraph 6D gives the buyer until the earlier of the Closing Date or a number of days after receipt that is left as a fill-in blank on the form; the form prints no default for that blank, and what an empty one means is a question for a lawyer rather than something TREC has answered. The Florida Realtors/Florida Bar AS IS contract sets a Title Evidence Deadline of 15 days before closing if the blank is left empty, then STANDARD A(ii) gives the buyer 5 days after receipt to examine and notify. North Carolina's Form 2-T sets no title deadline at all — title examination sits inside the Due Diligence Period along with everything else. Check the paragraph in your own form before assuming you have a week.

Title Commitment Schedule B: What It Stops Insuring

Q: What is the exception about matters arising after the Commitment Date?

It is the gap, and it is the one exception the national ALTA form actually prints. Schedule B, Part II of the 2021 ALTA Commitment carries a bracketed item 1 excepting any defect, lien, encumbrance, adverse claim or other matter that appears for the first time in the Public Records, or is created, attaches or is disclosed, between the Commitment Date and the date on which all of the Schedule B, Part I Requirements are met. The Commitment Date is on Schedule A, and it is often weeks older than your closing. Anything a stranger records in between sits outside coverage until the file is updated at closing.

The commitment arrives as an email attachment with a name like GF2600-4471-Commitment.pdf, and the first page is a notice in capital letters telling you what the document is not. Schedule A is three inches of text: an effective date, a policy amount, the name of whoever currently owns the place, a legal description with a lot and block number. Then Schedule B starts, and the page count stops making sense — because behind it sit copies of every recorded instrument the company decided to name.

Buyers read Schedule A, recognise their own name and the sale price, and file the rest. That is the mistake this page exists to prevent. Everything the policy will refuse to cover is on the other schedule, and the contract that decides how long you get to argue about it measures that time from the day the document reaches you, not from the day you open it. TREC's form puts it in four words — days after Buyer receives — and the two dates are the same only if you make them the same.

Forms and rules below were read on 22 August 2026, editions named as printed on each page.

What the document is, and what it refuses to be

A commitment is an offer to issue a policy. It is not a report on your title, and both the national form and the Texas one say so in their own words.

The ALTA Commitment for Title Insurance, 2021 v. 01.00, effective 07-01-2021 — the only commitment form on ALTA's published list besides the short form, with no later revision shown against it — opens with a notice in capitals: this commitment is an offer to issue one or more title insurance policies; all claims or remedies sought against the company involving the content of this commitment or the policy must be based solely in contract; this commitment is not an abstract of title, report of the condition of title, legal opinion, opinion of title, or other representation of the status of title. It goes further. The procedures used to determine insurability, including any search and examination, are proprietary to the company, were performed solely for the benefit of the company, and create no extracontractual liability to any person, including a proposed insured.

Texas says the same thing in shorter sentences. Form T-7 tells the buyer directly: The Commitment is not an opinion or report of your title. It is a contract to issue you a policy subject to the Commitment's terms and requirements. Every page of that PDF carries the footer Form T-7 Sec. II Effective January 3, 2014, and that is still the file TDI links from its Basic Manual Section II index. On the same index the policies themselves — T-1, T-1R, T-2, T-11, the T-16 aggregation endorsement, the T-19 series — are each annotated "Effective 11/1/2024". The commitment form was not reissued with them. The document promising you a policy is a decade older than the policy it promises.

So nobody is telling you the title is good. Somebody is telling you which risks they are willing to carry, and the schedules are where that decision gets itemised.

The national form is not the only layout you may see. ALTA numbers its two lists as Schedule B, Part I—Requirements and Schedule B, Part II—Exceptions. Texas splits them across letters instead: Schedule B is exceptions, Schedule C is requirements, and Schedule D discloses the estimated premium and who is being paid out of it. Same architecture, different filing. If someone tells you to look at B-II and your document has no B-II, you are holding a state-promulgated form.

Part I is a to-do list that turns into exclusions if nobody does it

The ALTA Requirements page is short and looks harmless: notify the company in writing of any party not referred to in the commitment who will obtain an interest in the land or make a loan on it — to which the form adds, in the next sentence, The Company may then make additional Requirements or Exceptions; pay the agreed amount for the estate or interest; pay the premiums, fees and charges; and deliver documents satisfactory to the company, properly authorised, executed, delivered and recorded. Then a line reading (Additional Requirements may be listed here by number). Everything that can wreck a closing lives under that line.

The form also sets a deadline on itself and leaves it blank. Under Commitment to Issue Policy: If all of the Schedule B, Part I—Requirements have not been met within ______ (Insert the time period) after the Commitment Date, this Commitment terminates and the Company's liability and obligation end. Condition 2 repeats the point. Whoever issued your commitment typed a number into that space, and it is worth knowing what they typed.

Texas prints its version of the same list as Schedule C, and the sentence that introduces it is the one worth memorising, because it spells out a conversion the national form leaves implicit: your policy will not cover loss, costs, attorneys' fees and expenses resulting from the following requirements that will appear as Exceptions in Schedule B of the Policy, unless you dispose of these matters to our satisfaction, before the date the Policy is issued. Item 2 asks for satisfactory evidence that no person occupying the land claims an interest, that standby fees and taxes are paid, that improvements are complete and accepted by the owner with all contractors, subcontractors, labourers and suppliers fully paid and no mechanic's, laborer's or materialmen's liens attached, and that there is legal right of access to and from the land. Item 4 is open-ended: any defect, lien or other matter that arises or is filed after the effective date of the commitment.

That is the conversion. A requirement nobody clears does not block the closing — it slides across into the exceptions and is simply not insured. Requirements can also appear after you have read the document, which is the subject of five signals a deal is dying; the point here is what happens to the ones that never get cleared.

The national form prints one exception. Your state prints the rest

Here is the thing almost every explainer gets wrong. The ALTA commitment does not contain a list of standard exceptions. Schedule B, Part II runs to four things, in this order: an unnumbered paragraph about Discriminatory Covenants; a lead-in stating that the policy will not insure against loss from the terms of any lease or easement identified in Schedule A and will include the following exceptions unless cleared to the company's satisfaction; one bracketed exception; and then (Additional Exceptions may be listed here by number). That is the whole printed list. Everything else on your Part II was typed by a local underwriter or comes from a state-promulgated form.

The one exception the form itself prints is the gap: any defect, lien, encumbrance, adverse claim or other matter that appears for the first time in the Public Records, or is created, attaches or is disclosed, between the Commitment Date and the date on which all of the Part I requirements are met. Look at the Commitment Date on Schedule A and compare it with your closing date. That interval is a hole in the coverage, and it is closed by the company updating the search at closing rather than by anything you do.

The 2021 revision also changed how old restrictions are treated, in two places rather than one. Commitment Condition 1.a defines a Discriminatory Covenant as any covenant, condition, restriction or limitation unenforceable under applicable law because it illegally discriminates against a class of individuals based on personal characteristics. The unnumbered paragraph opening Schedule B, Part II then begins Some historical land records contain Discriminatory Covenants that are illegal and unenforceable by law, and says the commitment and the policy treat any such covenant in a referenced document as if it were redacted, repudiated, removed, and not republished or recirculated — only the remaining provisions of that document are excepted from coverage. Nothing is struck from the county's files by this. What changes is what the insurer reads the recorded document to say.

Where a state promulgates the form, the standard exceptions are printed and numbered. Texas Schedule B carries these, in this order:

Texas Form T-7, Schedule B (read 22 Aug 2026)	What it pushes outside the policy
1. Restrictive covenants of record, itemised — we must either insert specific recording data or delete this exception	Named subdivision restrictions. The form forbids a vague "restrictions of record"
2. Discrepancies, conflicts or shortages in area or boundary lines, encroachments, protrusions, overlapping improvements	Everything a survey would show
3. Homestead, community property or survivorship rights of a spouse of any insured (owner policy only)	Marital property claims
4. Rights asserted to tidelands, beds of navigable rivers, filled-in land, statutory water rights, the strip between mean low tide and the vegetation line (owner policy only)	Sovereign and water boundaries
5. Standby fees, taxes and assessments "for the year _____, and subsequent years" — another blank — plus later taxes owing because land usage or ownership changed	The tax bill, and the rollback nobody budgets for
6. The terms and conditions of the documents creating your interest in the land	The deed's own covenants
10. Specific matters — we must insert matters or delete this exception	Your file's actual easements, leases and liens

Items 7 to 9 apply to loan policies and binders. Items 1 and 10 are the ones with instructions attached: the company must either fill in a recording reference or strike the exception. If your commitment has a Part II line naming a document by volume and page, ask for that document. In Texas paragraph 6B entitles you to it at your expense as an Exception Document — though only for exceptions other than the standard printed ones, which is another reason to know which of yours are standard.

Amending an exception is a purchase, and it has a price

Exceptions come off on conditions, not on request. The national form sets out no removal procedure at all, but two of its Conditions tell you who holds the pen. Condition 5.a.ii, listing the expenses the company will stand behind if it amends the commitment, describes the proposed insured's good faith reliance to eliminate, with the Company's written consent, any Schedule B, Part II—Exceptions: the consent named there is the underwriter's, and the seller is not a party to it. Condition 6.d then limits what the removal buys — The deletion or modification of any Schedule B, Part II—Exception does not constitute an agreement or obligation to provide coverage beyond the terms and provisions of this Commitment or the Policy. Striking a line is not the same as insuring what the line described.

Texas prices the most common removal openly. Procedural Rule P-2 allows the company to amend the area and boundary exception — Schedule B item 2 — to delete everything except "shortages in area", and it may accept an existing survey rather than requiring a new one, notwithstanding the age of the survey or who it was prepared for, provided it also gets an affidavit verifying that survey. On residential property that affidavit is the promulgated Form T-47 — or the Form T-47.1 unsworn declaration that P-2 accepts in its place, which is why TREC's paragraph 6C names both. Rate Rule R-16, effective 1 November 2024, sets the premium: zero on a loan policy, and on an owner's policy 15 percent of the basic premium rate where the land is not residential, 5 percent where it is, but not less than $20. The company may still carve out specific problems the survey reveals — a fence over a line does not become insured merely because you paid for the amendment.

Two consequences follow, and neither is obvious from the commitment itself. The first is that this decision was made before you saw a single exception: TREC No. 20-19 paragraph 6A(8) is a checkbox in the offer, choosing between leaving the exception intact and amending it to "shortages in area" at the buyer's or the seller's expense. The second is that the premium lands on your settlement statement as a title line, where the rules on which figures may move are the ones described in Loan Estimate vs Closing Disclosure.

Your contract already agreed to most of what is in there

Objecting to an exception assumes you are allowed to. Read your purchase agreement first, because it almost certainly pre-approved a list.

TREC 20-19 paragraph 6A promises an owner policy subject to nine named categories, including restrictive covenants common to the platted subdivision, the standard printed exception for taxes, utility easements created by the dedication deed or plat, the marital rights exception, the waters and tidelands exception, and the minerals exclusion approved by the Texas Department of Insurance. Paragraph 6D then permits objections to what the Commitment discloses other than items 6A(1) through (9) — but to what the survey discloses other than items 6A(1) through (7), so the two prongs are measured against different halves of the same list. Florida works the same way from the other end: STANDARD A(i) of the AS IS contract lists what the policy may be subject to — land use and zoning, plat restrictions, outstanding oil, gas and mineral rights without right of entry, unplatted utility easements of record within stated widths, taxes for the year of closing, assumed and purchase money mortgages — and treats a violation of items (b) through (f) as a title defect. North Carolina's Form 2-T (Rev. 7/2025) requires a general warranty deed conveying fee simple marketable and insurable title without exception for mechanics' liens, lis pendens, monetary liens and judgments, except ad valorem taxes for the current year, utility easements and unviolated covenants, and such other liens, encumbrances or defects as may be specifically approved by Buyer in writing.

So the honest question when reading Part II is narrower than "what is on this list". It is: which of these did I not already agree to?

The window is a blank in Texas, five days in Florida, and nothing in North Carolina

Contract (read 22 Aug 2026)	When the commitment must arrive	Time to object
TREC No. 20-19, eff. 07/01/2026	Within 20 days after the title company receives a copy of the contract; automatically extended up to 15 days, or to 3 days before Closing Date, whichever is earlier	Earlier of the Closing Date or ____ days after receipt of the Commitment, Exception Documents and survey — the number is a blank on the form
FloridaRealtors/FloridaBar-ASIS-7x, footer "Rev. 12/24 26"	Title Evidence Deadline: at least 15 days before Closing Date if the blank is left empty (5 if paragraph 8(a) is checked)	5 days after receipt to examine and notify Seller in writing of defects that render title unmarketable
NC Form 2-T (Rev. 7/2025)	Seller uses best efforts to provide existing title information as soon as reasonably possible	No title-specific deadline; examination sits inside the Due Diligence Period

Three details in that table decide outcomes. In Texas the 20 days run from the title company's receipt of the contract, not from the effective date, so a contract that reaches the title company late shortens nothing except your reading time — and if the commitment never arrives within the extended period, paragraph 6B lets the buyer terminate with the earnest money refunded. Failure to object in time is a waiver, except that the requirements in Schedule C of the Commitment are not waived by Buyer; that carve-out is the most useful sentence in paragraph 6. Once objections are made, the seller's duty to cure opens with seven words that decide most of these arguments — Provided Seller is not obligated to incur any expense — and then runs for a 15-day Cure Period, after which the buyer has 5 days to terminate or is deemed to have waived. A revised commitment or a new Exception Document restarts the same period for the new matter only.

Florida's rhythm is different and tighter. The AS IS Residential Contract for Sale and Purchase (FloridaRealtors/FloridaBar-ASIS-7x) does make the seller hand over a copy of any owner's policy it already has within 5 days of the Effective Date, but the Title Commitment itself is due only by the Title Evidence Deadline, and that deadline is a blank defaulting to 15 days before closing. The test for objecting is unmarketability rather than dislike, and silence costs you the point: if the buyer fails to notify, the buyer shall be deemed to have accepted title as it then is. There is one protection worth knowing — if the commitment is delivered less than 5 days before the Closing Date, STANDARD A(ii) lets the buyer push Closing out to 5 days after receipt rather than lose the examination window. The cure period is 30 days, and at the end of it the buyer may extend cure by up to 120 days, accept the defects, or terminate and take the deposit back.

North Carolina simply does not build a title clock. Everything happens inside the Due Diligence Period, which is also where the survey lives, and paragraph 8(g) adds that the buyer's failure to conduct a survey or examine title before the period expires does not relieve the seller of the obligation to deliver good title. That is a real backstop, but it is an obligation enforced after the fact, not a refund right — where the deposit sits at that point is a separate question, covered in earnest money: who holds it.

Twenty minutes with your own copy, the day it arrives

Open the PDF. Find the Commitment Date on Schedule A and write it next to your closing date. Count the numbered items in Part II, or in Schedule B if you are on a Texas form, and tick off each one you can match to an attached recorded document. Circle the ones you cannot. Then open your contract to the title paragraph, read the list of exceptions it already permits, and mark every Part II item that is not on that list — that shortlist is what your objection right is actually for.

Then find the date. In Texas it is a blank someone filled in when the offer was written, and the form prints no fallback for it. Paragraph 6D says the buyer must object by the earlier of (i) the Closing Date or (ii) ____ days after Buyer receives the Commitment, Exception Documents, and the survey, and it says nothing at all about what an empty second figure means. Reading the empty blank as leaving the Closing Date the only outer limit is an inference about the sentence, not a rule TREC has printed, and it is not the only reading on offer — one could argue as easily that the missing number leaves the second prong with no measure. This page cannot resolve that, and neither can a form. If the blank in your copy is empty, that is a question for a Texas real estate attorney, and it is far cheaper to raise while the offer is still being written than after a commitment lands. In Florida it is five days from receipt of the Title Commitment. Put it on the same calendar as everything else in the 45-day map, and if the Exception Documents are missing, ask for them in writing the same day, because the clock in Texas runs from receipt of the commitment, the exception documents and the survey together.

Three forms are not a national rule, and the states quoted here are the three that publish their contract text openly enough to quote from. Promulgated forms also move on separate schedules: the Texas commitment still carries its January 2014 effective date while the policies it promises were reissued on 1 November 2024, the rate rule was reset the same day, and ALTA's own list still showed the 2021 commitment as current on 22 August 2026. Nothing here is legal advice, and where this page reads a blank or an ambiguous clause, that reading is offered as a reading. Where a Part II item looks like it touches how you intend to use the property — an easement across the drive, a covenant on outbuildings, a lease you did not know about — that is a question for a real estate attorney licensed where the property sits, and it is worth asking while the objection period is still open rather than after it closes.