What are the legal rights of lenders and homeowners in foreclosure?
by ilene - October 23rd, 2009 12:20 pm
What are the legal rights of lenders and homeowners in foreclosure?
Courtesy of Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns
After I published the recent story on the case against servicing agent MERS in the Kansas Supreme court, I noticed a lot of chatter about some mortgage servicing line items in Wells Fargo’s earnings report. So I wanted to quote a few blurbs from the Kansas Appeals Court and Supreme Court decisions as background for another post on future mortgage service revenue streams in banking.
The Appeals Court case had a narrow focus as to whether MERS was a ‘necessary party’ in this particular foreclosure case. The finding was that MERS was not. The Kansas Supreme court agreed that MERS was not “contingently necessary.” They went further in concluding that the fact that MERS neither possessed the promissory note or had authority to assign it may means it cannot file suit.
However, because this is not a comprehensive judgment as to MERS’ role as nominee, clarification is needed. Given the number of foreclosures in the US, I expect this case is going to the Supreme Court.
Here are the facts.
Landmark National Bank v. Boyd A. Kessler summary
My summary of the case is as follows:
A homeowner based in Kansas came into economic difficulty, causing him to fall behind on his mortgage and file for bankruptcy on 13 April 2006. While he could have exempted his house in discharging his personal liabilities in bankruptcy, the homeowner opted instead to surrender the house.
Three months after he filed, on 27 Jul 2006, the bank with his primary mortgage decided to foreclose. It did not inform MERS (the central repository which tracks changes in mortgage ownership and servicing rights). Nor did it inform the bank holding the secondary mortgage.
On 6 September 2006, the district court then enters a default judgment and orders a sale on 29 September 2006. Notice of the sale went out into newspapers and a couple picked up this foreclosed property on the cheap on 14 November 2006. So far, so good.
Except that very day, a full seven after the bankruptcy filing, the secondary bank filed a petition to set aside the district court opinion, arguing that MERS was a “contingently necessary party.” It wants the money it is owed. And on 16…