STEWART ESCROW & TITLE MIDWEST

This is not a specific review for this Steward Title (it is just the closet to my residence), I wanted to review the company as a whole since they where the ones I had to deal with over the last 3 years. I had some concerns about my Home Owner's Association and the relevance of the covenants to my property. I decided to ask the Title Insurance company to establish if there were issues with the document since we purchased the land as "Unplatted". It took more than 6 months for Stewart to submit and have a review and the answers were more questionable than the questions I asked. I decided to obtain a second opinion by hiring a real estate attorney who was able to settle the above issue, however, at a large cost (as attorneys charge by the hour). My attorney's search also found a problem with the title itself (an issue with the actual ownership of the property, where if not corrected would have determined the ownership to not be mine but an owner who owned the property ~15 years ago). I submitted the issue with Stewart and they were reasonably prompt at fixing the problem, once it was found. This now leads to the issues I have with this company. The finding of the original covenant problem and the ownership issues were both paid from personal funds (and were not small ~$14K), I asked that I be reimbursed since they felt the problems both merited correction. I have been denied by this insurance provider (who also should have found the original problem in the title when I purchased the property, which they did not). Although they fixed the problems they did NOT feel paying for the finding of the problems was reimbursable. While the contract does have some statements regarding the separate hiring of an attorney to FIX problems, there is no point that prevents payment for costs associated with problem discovery. While I continue to consider the appropriate practices of obtaining title insurance in the first place, I WILL NOT go back to Stewart for such products given the blatant lack of actual return for paying into a title insurance policy. I am both disappointed with the original title search services (which should have found the problem in the first place) and upset further that Stewart Title is not willing to pay for mistakes I had to find (pay outside the contract) when the questions came up. I feel like this company is willing to take the money for insurance and not pay out on the policy when problems are found. This is a situation where I think you put the security of your home on the line by using a company willing to re-neg on their obligations. VERY DISAPPOINTED with both the insurance service, the customer service, and the overall trustworthiness of Stewart Abstract and Title Company.