consideration | Livinglies's Weblog

Applying Common Sense and Law to Assignments of Mortgage

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Neil Garfield

Every time a homeowner wins in foreclosure the investors are actually protected. It’s the sale of the property and/or entry of the foreclosure judgment that cuts investors off from their investment. Weird, right?

An article in the recently published Florida Bar Journal illustrates perfectly the confusion that occurs within the courts and by lawyers when they stray from the simple pronouncement of accepted law in all jurisdictions.

Here is one simple proposition declared by the Florida Supreme Court which is a mirror of similar pronouncements from the Highest courts in all other U.S. Jurisdictions: The case is Johns v Gillian 134 Fla. 575, 184 So. 140 (1938).

“the mere delivery of the note and mortgage, with intention to pass title, upon proper consideration, will vest the equitable interest in the person to whom it is so delivered.”

The obvious implication is that such a person can enforce the mortgage. The other obvious implication is that a claimant who claims to have received possession by delivery of the note and mortgage cannot enforce the mortgage if there was no intent to transfer title to the mortgage, or if there was no payment of consideration.

The obvious takeaways from this simple, basic and completely accepted point of law are

delivery of note and mortgage is important and potentially dispositive BUT

defects in the instrument of assignment of mortgage are not fatal IF

intention to pass title is present AND

payment of proper consideration is present

GET FREE HELP: Just click here and submit the confidential, free, no obligation, private REGISTRATION FORM.

Let us help you plan for trial and draft your foreclosure defense strategy, discovery requests and defense narrative: 202-838-6345. Ask for a Consult or check us out on www.lendinglies.com. Order a PDR BASIC to have us review and comment on your notice of TILA Rescission or similar document.

I provide advice and consultation to many people and lawyers so they can spot the key required elements of a scam — in and out of court. If you have a deal you want skimmed for red flags order the Consult and fill out the REGISTRATION FORM.

PLEASE FILL OUT AND SUBMIT OUR FREE REGISTRATION FORM

Get a Consult and TERA (Title & Encumbrances Analysis and & Report) 202-838-6345 or 954-451-1230. The TERA replaces and greatly enhances the former COTA (Chain of Title Analysis, including a one page summary of Title History and Gaps).

THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
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The jumble occurs when anyone of those points is taken out of order or entirely out of consideration which is what the courts and even some foreclosure defense lawyers are missing.

Delivery of the original note and the recorded mortgage document is important and potentially dispositive. This is true if proper consideration was paid and there was an intent to pass title.

But the banks would have us believe that only the intent to pass title is important, even if the transferor has no title. There is no law and no case decision that agrees with that proposition. And the banks would have us believe that the intent to pass title is the only thing that matters even if no proper consideration was paid. There is no law and no case decision that supports that proposition.

By law, as adopted in the statutes of all 50 states when they adopted the Uniform Commercial Code, consideration must be paid for an effective transfer of the mortgage. UCC Article 9 section 203. All the case law agrees and there is no case law contrary to that proposition.

BUT there is plenty of case law where the courts ignore it mostly because the pro se homeowners or foreclosure defense attorney didn’t present the issue clearly.

The money proves the intent and the intent justifies the money. Without the money the transfer is a complete nullity which legally means it never happened.

While there are presumptions about transfer of the debt when the “original” note is supposedly delivered (as though transfer of the note was title to the debt), the only thing that actually transfers the debt under law is payment of money with intent to purchase and sell the debt and the mortgage.

Where’s the money?

In virtually all cases the money is absent, which leads directly to the point of the law to begin with — foreclosure should only be granted in circumstances where the proceeds of foreclosure will go to the party claiming that equitable remedy. Here is the plain truth. Those proceeds are not going to anyone who has value/consideration in the deal.

The investment bank’s legal strategy of claiming that it once paid consideration is defeated entirely by its sale of the “risk of loss” (i.e., the debt) several times over in the shadow banking market.

Dubious? Check the proposed and actual regulations concerning the retention of a share of the risk of loss by investment banks. That is the big dispute. For loans that were created up until around 2010, there was zero retention of risk.

The meaning of that eludes most people unfamiliar with the terminology of Wall Street. So here it is: if you have no risk you own no debt.

My sources say that is still true and the regulators are powerless to stop it because of the right to enter into contracts that are disguised sales of the risk of loss, which is to say disguised sales of the debt by the one party who is always the one controlling events on the ground in foreclosures — the investment bank.

Do you need to prove all that? Nope. Just demand proof of consideration. And don’t stop demanding it no matter what the opposing lawyer says and even regardless of what the judge says. In the end, you’ll be right. Every time a homeowner wins in foreclosure the investors are actually protected. It’s the sale of the property and/or entry of the foreclosure judgment that cuts investors off from their investment.

Filed under: burden of persuasion, burden of pleading, BURDEN OF PROOF, discovery, Discovery -Subpoena, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, forensic investigation, legal standing, Pleading, prima facie case, standing | Tagged: ARTICLE 9, assignment of mortgage, consideration, Transfer of mortgage, UCC, UNIFORM COMMERCIAL CODE | 6 Comments »

Was There a Loan Contract?

Posted on July 18, 2016 by Neil Garfield

In addition to defrauding the borrower whose signature will be copied and fabricated for dozens of “sales” of loans and securities deriving their value from a nonexistent loan contract, this distorted practice does two things: (a) it cheats investors out of their assumed and expected interest in nonexistent mortgage loan contracts and (b) it leaves “borrowers” in a parallel universe where they can never know the identity of their actual creditor — a phenomenon created when the proceeds of sales of MBS were never paid into trust for a defined set of investors. The absence of the defined set of investors is the reason why bank lawyers fight so hard to make such disclosures “irrelevant” in courts of law.

The important fact that is often missed is that the “warehouse” lender was neither a warehouse nor a lender. Like the originator it is a layer of anonymity in the lending process that is used as a conduit for the funding received by the “borrower.”

None of the real parties who funded the transaction had any knowledge about the transaction to which their funds were committed. The nexus between the investors and/or REMIC Trust and the original loan SHOULD have been accomplished by the Trust purchasing the loan — an event that never occurred. And this is why fabricated, forged documents are used in foreclosures — to cover over the fact that there was no purchase and sale of the loan by the Trust and to cover up the fact that investors’ money was used in ways directly contrary to their interests and their agreement with the bogus REMIC Trusts whose bogus securities were purchased by investors.

In the end the investors were left to rely on the unscrupulous investment bank that issued the bogus MBS to somehow create a nexus between the investors and the alleged loans that were funded, if at all, by the direct infusion of investors’ capital and NOT by the REMIC Trust.

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

—————-

also see comments below from Dan Edstrom, senior securitization analyst for LivingLies

——————-

David Belanger recently sent out an email explaining in his words the failed securitization process that sent our economy into a toxic spiral that continues, unabated, to weaken our ability to recover from the removal of capital from the most important source of spending and purchasing in our economy. This was an epic redistribution of wealth from the regular guy to a handful of “bankers” who were not really acting as bankers.

His email article is excellent and well worth reading a few times. He nails the use of remote conduits that have nothing to do with any loan transaction, much less a loan contract. The only thing I would add is the legal issue of the relationship between this information and the ability to rescind.

Rescission is available ONLY if there is something to rescind — and that has traditionally been regarded as a loan contract. If there is no loan contract, as Belanger asserts (and I agree) then there is nothing to rescind. But if the “transaction” can be rescinded because it is an implied contract between the source of funds and the alleged borrower, then rescission presumably applies.

Second, there is the question of what constitutes a “warehouse” lender. By definition if there is a warehouse lending contract in which the originator has liabilities or risk exposure to losses on the loans originated, then the transaction would appear to be properly represented by the loan documents executed by the borrower, although the absence of a signature from the originator presents a problem for “consummation” of the loan contract.

But, as suggested by the article if the “warehouse lender” was merely a conduit for funds from an undisclosed third party, then it is merely a sham entity in the chain. And if the originator has no exposure to risk of loss then it merely acted as sham conduit also, or paid originator or broker. This scenario is described in detail in Belanger’s article (see below) and we can see that in practice, securitization was distorted at several points — one of which was the presumption that an unauthroized party (contrary to disclosure and representations during the loan “approval” and loan “closing”) was inserted as “lender” when it loaned no money. Yet the originator’s name was inserted as payee on the note or mortgagee on the mortgage.

All of this brings us to the question of whether judges are right — that the contract is consummated at the time that the borrower affixes his or her signature. It is my opinion that this view is erroneous and presents moral hazard and roadblock to enforcing the rights of disclosure of the parties, terms and compensation of the people and entities arising out of the “origination” of the loan.

If judges are right, then the borrower can only claim breach of contract for failure to loan money in accordance with the disclosures required by TILA. And the “borrower’s” ability to rescind within 3 days has been virtually eliminated as many of the loans were at least treated as though they had been “sold” to third parties who posed as warehouse lenders who in turn “sold” the loan to even more remote parties, none of which were the purported REMIC Trusts. Those alleged REMIC Trusts were a smokescreen — sham entities that didn’t even serve as conduits — left without any capital, contrary to the terms of the Trust agreement and the representations of the seller of mortgage backed securities by these Trusts who had no business, assets, liabilities, income, expenses or even a bank account.

If judges are right that the contract is consummated even without a loan from from the party identified as “lender” then they are ruling contrary to the Federal requirements of lending disclosures and in many states in violation of fair lending laws.

There is an outcome of erroneous rulings from the bench in which the basic elements of contract are ignored in order to give banks a favorable result, to wit: the marketplace for business is now functioning under a rule of people instead of the rule of law. It is now an apparently legal business plan where the object is to capture the signature of a consumer and use that signature for profit is dozens of ways contrary to every representation and disclosure made at the time of application and “closing” of the transaction.

As Belanger points out, without consideration it is black letter law backed by centuries of common law that for a contract to be formed and therefore enforceable it must fit the four legs of a stool — offer, acceptance of the terms offered, consideration from the first party to the alleged loan transaction and consideration from the second party. The consideration from the “lender”can ONLY be payment to fund the loan. If the originator does it with their own funds or credit, then they have probably satisfied the requirement of consideration.

But if a third party supplied the consideration for the “loan” AND that third party has no contractual nexus with the “originator” or alleged “warehouse lender”then the requirement of consideration from the “originator” is not and cannot be met. In addition to defrauding the borrower whose signature will be copied and fabricated for dozens of “sales” of loans and securities deriving their value from a nonexistent loan contract, this distorted practice does two things: (a) it cheats investors out of their assumed and expected interest in nonexistent mortgage loan contracts and (b) it leaves “borrowers” in a parallel universe where they can never know the identity of their actual creditor — a phenomenon created when the proceeds of sales of MBS were never paid into trust for a defined set of investors.

David Belanger’s Email article follows, unabridged:

AND AS I SAID, WITH NO CONSUMMATION AT CLOSING, BELANGER NEVER CONSUMMATED ANY MORTGAGE CONTRACT/ NOTE.

BECAUSE THEY ARE THE ONLY PARTY TO THE FAKE CONTRACT THAT FOLLOWED THROUGH WITH THERE CONSIDERATION, WITH SIGNING THE MORTGAGE AND NOTE,

AS REQUIRED, TO PERFORM. BUT GMAC MORTGAGE CORP. DID NOT PERFORM , I.E. LEND ANY MONEY AT CLOSING, AS WE HAVE THE WIRE TRANSFER SHOWING THEY DID NOT FUND THE MORTGAGE AND NOTE AT CLOSING. CANT HAVE A LEGAL CONTRACT IF ONLY ONE OF THE PARTY’S. PERFORMS HIS OBLIGATIONS.

THIS MAKE , AS I SAID. RESCISSION IS VALID. AND THEY HAVE NOT FOLLOWED THRU, THERE PART.

AND IT DOES GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO

RESCIND THE CONTRACT BASED ON ALL NEWLY DISCOVERED EVIDENCE, THAT THE PARTY TO THE MORTGAGE /NOTE CONTRACT, DID NOT

FULFILL THERE DUTY AND DID NOT PREFORM IN ANY WAY AS REQUIRED TO HAVE A VALID BINDING CONTRACT.

Tonight we have a rebroadcast of a segment from Episode 15 with a guest who is a recent ex-patriot from 17 years in the mortgage banking industry… Scot started out as a escrow agent doing closings, then advanced to mortgage loan officer, processor, underwriter, branch manager, mortgage broker and loss mitigator for the banks. Interestingly, he says,

“Looking back on my career I don’t believe any mortgage closing that I was involved in was ever consummated.”
Tonight Scot will be covering areas relating to:

1 lack of disclosure and consideration
2 substitution of true mortgage contracting partner
3 unfunded loan agreements
4 non-existent trusts
5 securitization of your note and bifurcation of the security interest and
6 how to identify and prove the non-existence of the so-called trust named in an assignment which may be coming after you to foreclose

: http://recordings.talkshoe.com/TC-139335/TS-1093904.mp3

so lets look at what happen a the closing of the mortgage CONTRACT SHELL WE.

1/ MORTGAGE AND NOTES, SAYS A ( SPECIFIC LENDER) GAVE YOU MONEY, ( AS WE KNOW THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN. )

2/ HOME OWNER WAS TOLD AT CLOSING AND BEFORE CLOSING THAT THE NAMED LENDER WOULD SUPPLY THE FUNDS AT CLOSING, AND WAS ALSO TOLD BY THE CLOSING AGENT , THE SAME LIE.

3/ THERE ARE 2 PARTIES TO A CLOSING OF A MORTGAGE AND NOTE, 1/ HOMEOWNER, 2/ LENDER.

3/ Offer and acceptance , Consideration,= SO HOMEOWNERS SIGN A MORTGAGE AND NOTE, IN CONSIDERATION of the said lender’s promises to pay the homeowner for said signing of the mortgage and note.

4/ but the lender does not, follow thru with his CONSIDERATION. I.E TO FUND THE CONTRACT. AND THE LENDER NAMED ON THE CONTRACT, KNEW ALL ALONG THAT HE WOULD NOT BE THE FUNDING SOURCE. FRAUD AT CONCEPTION. KNOWINGLY OUT RIGHT FRAUD ON THE HOMEOWNERS.

5/ THERE ARE NO STATUES OF LIMITATIONS ON FRAUD IN THE INDUCEMENT, OR ANY OTHER FRAUD.

6/ SO AS NEIL AND AND LENDING TEAM, AND OTHERS HAVE POINTED OUT, SO SO MANY TIMES HERE AND OTHER PLACES,

THERE COULD NOT BE ANY CONSUMMATION OF THE CONTRACT AT CLOSING,BY THE TWO PARTY’S TO THE CONTRACT, IF ONLY ONE PERSON TO THE CONTRACT ACTED IN GOOD FAITH,

AND THE OTHER PARTY DID NOT ACT IN GOOD FAITH OR EVEN SUPPLIED ANY ( CONSIDERATION WHAT SO EVER AT CLOSING OF THE CONTRACT.) A MORTGAGE AND NOTE IS A CONTRACT PEOPLE.

7/ SO THIS WOULD GIVE RISE TO THE LAW OF ( RESCISSION).

. A finding of misrepresentation allows for a remedy of rescission and sometimes damages depending on the type of misrepresentation.

AND THE BANKS CAN SCREAM ALL THEY WANT, IF THE PRETENDER LENDER THAT IS ON YOUR MORTGAGE AND NOTE, DID NOT SUPPLY THE FUNDS AT CLOSING, AS WE ALL KNOW DID HAPPEN, THEN THE MORTGAGE CONTRACT IS VOID. AND THERE WAS NO CONSUMMATION AT THE CLOSING TABLE, BY THE PARTY THAT SAID IT WAS FUNDING THE CONTRACT.

CANT GET MORE SIMPLE THAT THAT. and this supports all of the above. that the fake lender did not PERFORM AT CLOSING, DID NOT FUND ANY MONEY OR LOAN ANY MONEY AT CLOSING WITH ANY BORROWER, SO ONLY ONE ( THE BORROWER ) DID PERFORM AT CLOSING. BOTH PARTY’S MUST PERFORM TO HAVE A LEGAL BINDING CONTRACT.

SEE RODGERS V U.S.BANK HOME MORTGAGE ET, AL

THE WAREHOUSE LENDER NATIONAL CITY BANK OF KENTUCKY HELD THE NOTE THEN DELIVERED TO THIRD PARTY INVESTORS UNKNOWN

SECURITY NATIONAL FINANCIAL CORPORATION

5300 South 360 West, Suite 250

Salt Lake City, Utah 84123

Telephone (801) 264-1060

February 20, 2009

VIA EDGAR

U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Division of Corporation Finance

100 F Street, N. E., Mail Stop 4561

Washington, D. C. 20549

Attn: Sharon M. Blume

Assistant Chief Accountant

Re: Security National Financial Corporation

Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2007

Form 10-Q for Fiscal Quarter Ended June 30, 2008

File No. 0-9341

Dear Ms. Blume:

Security National Financial Corporation (the “Company”) hereby supplements its responses to its previous response letters dated January 15, 2009, November 6, 2008 and October 9, 2008. These supplemental responses are provided as additional information concerning the Company’s mortgage loan operations and the appropriate accounting that the Company follows in connection with such operations.

The Company operates its mortgage loan operations through its wholly owned subsidiary, Security National Mortgage Company (“SNMC”). SNMC currently has 29 branch offices across

the continental United States and Hawaii. Each office has personnel who are qualified to solicit and underwrite loans that are submitted to SNMC by a network of mortgage brokers. Loan files submitted to SNMC are underwritten pursuant to third-party investor guidelines and are approved to fund after all documentation and other investor-established requirements are determined to meet the criteria for a saleable loans. (e.s.) Loan documents are prepared in the name of SNMC and then sent to the title company handling the loan transactions for signatures from the borrowers. Upon signing the documents, requests are then sent to the warehouse bank involved in the transaction to submit funds to the title company to pay for the settlement. All loans funded by warehouse banks are committed to be purchased (settled) by third-party investors under pre-established loan purchase commitments. The initial recordings of the deeds of trust (the mortgages) are made in the name of SNMC. (e.s.)

Soon after the loan funding, the deeds of trust are assigned, using the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (“MERS”), which is the standard in the industry for recording subsequent transfers in title, and the promissory notes are endorsed in blank to the warehouse bank that funded the loan. The promissory notes and the deeds of trust are then forwarded to the warehouse bank. The warehouse bank funds approximately 96% of the mortgage loans to the title company and the remainder (known in the industry as the “haircut”) is funded by the Company. The Company records a receivable from the third-party investor for the portion of the mortgage loans the Company has funded and for mortgage fee income earned by SNMC. The receivable from the third-party investor is unsecured inasmuch as neither the Company nor its subsidiaries retain any interest in the mortgage loans. (e.s.)

Conditions for Revenue Recognition

Pursuant to paragraph 9 of SFAS 140, a transfer of financial assets (or a portion of a financial asset) in which the transferor surrenders control over those financial assets shall be accounted as a sale to the extent that consideration other than beneficial interests in the transferred assets is received in exchange. The transferor has surrendered control over transferred assets if and only if all of the following conditions are met:

(a) The transferred assets have been isolated from the transferor―placed presumptively beyond the reach of the transferor and its creditors, even in bankruptcy or other receivership.

SNMC endorses the promissory notes in blank, assigns the deeds of trust through MERS and forwards these documents to the warehouse bank that funded the loan. Therefore, the transferred mortgage loans are isolated from the Company. The Company’s management is confident that the transferred mortgage loans are beyond the reach of the Company and its creditors. (e.s.)

(b) Each transferee (or, if the transferee is a qualified SPE, each holder of its beneficial interests) has the right to pledge or exchange the assets (or beneficial interests) it received, and no

condition restricts the transferee (or holder) from taking advantage of its right to pledge or exchange and provides more than a trivial benefit to the transferor.

The Company does not have any interest in the promissory notes or the underlying deeds of trust because of the steps taken in item (a) above. The Master Purchase and Repurchase Agreements (the “Purchase Agreements”) with the warehouse banks allow them to pledge the promissory notes as collateral for borrowings by them and their entities. Under the Purchase Agreements, the warehouse banks have agreed to sell the loans to the third-party investors; however, the warehouse banks hold title to the mortgage notes and can sell, exchange or pledge the mortgage loans as they choose. The Purchase Agreements clearly indicate that the purchaser, the warehouse bank, and seller confirm that the transactions contemplated herein are intended to be sales of the mortgage loans by seller to purchaser rather than borrowings secured by the mortgage loans. In the event that the third-party investors do not purchase or settle the loans from the warehouse banks, the warehouse banks have the right to sell or exchange the mortgage loans to the Company or to any other entity. Accordingly, the Company believes this requirement is met.

(c) The transferor does not maintain effective control over the transferred asset through either an agreement that entitles both entities and obligates the transferor to repurchase or redeem them before their maturity or the ability to unilaterally cause the holder to return the specific assets, other than through a cleanup call.

The Company maintains no control over the mortgage loans sold to the warehouse banks, and, as stated in the Purchase Agreements, the Company is not entitled to repurchase the mortgage loans. In addition, the Company cannot unilaterally cause a warehouse bank to return a specific loan. The warehouse bank can require the Company to repurchase mortgage loans not settled by the third-party investors, but this conditional obligation does not provide effective control over the mortgage loans sold. Should the Company want a warehouse bank to sell a mortgage loan to a different third-party investor, the warehouse bank would impose its own conditions prior to agreeing to the change, including, for instance, that the original intended third-party investor return the promissory note to the warehouse bank. Accordingly, the Company believes that it does not maintain effective control over the transferred mortgage loans and that it meets this transfer of control criteria.

The warehouse bank and not the Company transfers the loan to the third-party investor at the date it is settled. The Company does not have an unconditional obligation to repurchase the loan from the warehouse bank nor does the Company have any rights to purchase the loan. Only in the situation where the third-party investor does not settle and purchase the loan from the warehouse bank does the Company have a conditional obligation to repurchase the loan. Accordingly, the Company believes that it meets the criteria for recognition of mortgage fee income under SFAS 140 when the loan is funded by the warehouse bank and, at that date, the Company records an unsecured receivable from the investor for the portion of the loan funded by the Company, which is typically 4% of the face amount of the loan, together with the broker and origination fee income.

Loans Repurchased from Warehouse Banks

Historically, 99% of all mortgage loans are settled with investors. In the process of settling a loan, the Company may take up to six months to pursue remediation of an unsettled loan. There are situations when the Company determines that it is unable to enforce the settlement of a loan by the third-party investor and that it is in the Company’s best interest to repurchase the loan from the warehouse bank. Any previously recorded mortgage fee income is reversed in the period the loan was repurchased.

When the Company repurchases a loan, it is recorded at the lower of cost or market. Cost is equal to the amount paid to the warehouse bank and the amount originally funded by the Company. Market value is often difficult to determine for this type of loan and is estimated by the Company. The Company never estimates market value to exceed the unpaid principal balance on the loan. The market value is also supported by the initial loan underwriting documentation and collateral. The Company does not hold the loan as available for sale but as held to maturity and carries the loan at amortized cost. Any loan that subsequently becomes delinquent is evaluated by the Company at that time and any allowances for impairment are adjusted accordingly.

This will supplement our earlier responses to clarify that the Company repurchased the $36,291,000 of loans during 2007 and 2008 from the warehouse banks and not from third-party investors. The amounts paid to the warehouse banks and the amounts originally funded by the Company, exclusive of the mortgage fee income that was reversed, were classified as the cost of the investment in the mortgage loans held for investment.

The Company uses two allowance accounts to offset the reversal of mortgage fee income and for the impairment of loans. The allowance for reversal of mortgage fee income is carried on the balance sheet as a liability and the allowance for impairment of loans is carried as a contra account net of our investment in mortgage loans. Management believes the allowance for reversal of mortgage fee income is sufficient to absorb any losses of income from loans that are not settled by third-party investors. The Company is currently accruing 17.5 basis points of the principal amount of mortgage loans sold, which increased by 5.0 basis points during the latter part of 2007 and remained at that level during 2008.

The Company reviewed its estimates of collectability of receivables from broker and origination fee income during the fourth quarter of 2007, in view of the market turmoil discussed in the following paragraph and the fact that several third-party investors were attempting to back out of their commitments to buy (settle) loans, and the Company determined that it could still reasonably estimate the collectability of the mortgage fee income. However, the Company determined that it needed to increase its allowance for reversal of mortgage fee income as stated in the preceding paragraph.

Effect of Market Turmoil on Sales and Settlement of Mortgage Loans

As explained in previous response letters, the Company and the warehouse banks typically settle mortgage loans with third-party investors within 16 days of the closing and funding of the loans. However, beginning in the first quarter of 2007, there was a lot of market turmoil for mortgage backed securities. Initially, the market turmoil was primarily isolated to sub-prime mortgage loan originations. The Company originated less than 0.5% of its mortgage loans using this product during 2006 and the associated market turmoil did not have a material effect on the Company.

As 2007 progressed, however, the market turmoil began to expand into mortgage loans that were classified by the industry as Alt A and Expanded Criteria. The Company’s third-party investors, including Lehman Brothers (Aurora Loan Services) and Bear Stearns (EMC Mortgage Corp.), began to have difficulty marketing Alt A and Expanded Criteria loans to the secondary markets. Without notice, these investors changed their criteria for loan products and refused to settle loans underwritten by the Company that met these investor’s previous specifications. As stipulated in the agreements with the warehouse banks, the Company was conditionally required to repurchase loans from the warehouse banks that were not settled by the third-party investors.

Beginning in early 2007, without prior notice, these investors discontinued purchasing Alt A and Expanded Criteria loans. Over the period from April 2007 through May 2008, the warehouse banks had purchased approximately $36.2 million of loans that had met the investor’s previous criteria but were rejected by the investor in complete disregard of their contractual commitments. Although the Company pursued its rights under the investor contracts, the Company was unsuccessful due to the investors’ financial problems and could not enforce the loan purchase contracts. As a result of its conditional repurchase obligation, the Company repurchased these loans from the warehouse banks and reversed the mortgage fee income associated with the loans on the date of repurchase from the warehouse banks. The loans were classified to the long-term mortgage loan portfolio beginning in the second quarter of 2008.

Relationship with Warehouse Banks

As previously stated, the Company is not unconditionally obligated to repurchase mortgage loans from the warehouse banks. The warehouse banks purchase the loans with the commitment from the third-party investors to settle the loans from the warehouse banks. Accordingly, the Company does not make an entry to reflect the amount paid by the warehouse bank when the mortgage loans are funded. Upon sale of the loans to the warehouse bank, the Company only records the receivables for the brokerage and origination fees and the amount the Company paid at the time of funding.

Interest in Repurchased Loans

Once a mortgage loan is repurchased, it is immediately transferred to mortgage loans held for investment (or should have been) as the Company makes no attempts to sell these loans

to other investors at this time. Any efforts to find a replacement investor are made prior to repurchasing the loan from the warehouse bank. The Company makes no effort to remarket the loan after it is repurchased.

Acknowledgements

In connection with the Company’s responses to the comments, the Company hereby acknowledges as follows:

· The Company is responsible for the adequacy and accuracy of the disclosure in the filing;

· The staff comments or changes to disclosure in response to staff comments do not foreclose the Commission from taking any action with respect to the filing; and

· The Company may not assert staff comments as defense in any proceeding initiated by the Commission or any person under the Federal Securities Laws of the United States.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to call me at (801) 264-1060 or (801) 287-8171.

Very truly yours,

/s/ Stephen M. Sill

Stephen M. Sill, CPA

Vice President, Treasurer and

Chief Financial Officer

Contract law

Part of the common law series

Contract formation

Offer and acceptance Posting rule Mirror image rule Invitation to treat Firm offer Consideration Implication-in-fact

Defenses against formation

Lack of capacity Duress Undue influence Illusory promise Statute of frauds Non est factum

Contract interpretation

Parol evidence rule Contract of adhesion Integration clause Contra proferentem

Excuses for non-performance

Mistake Misrepresentation Frustration of purpose Impossibility Impracticability Illegality Unclean hands Unconscionability Accord and satisfaction

Rights of third parties

Privity of contract Assignment Delegation Novation Third-party beneficiary

Breach of contract

Anticipatory repudiation Cover Exclusion clause Efficient breach Deviation Fundamental breach

Remedies

Specific performance Liquidated damages Penal damages Rescission

Quasi-contractual obligations

Promissory estoppel Quantum meruit

Related areas of law

Conflict of laws Commercial law

Other common law areas

Tort law Property law Wills, trusts, and estates Criminal law Evidence

Such defenses operate to determine whether a purported contract is either (1) void or (2) voidable. Void contracts cannot be ratified by either party. Voidable contracts can be ratified.

Misrepresentation[edit]

Main article: Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation means a false statement of fact made by one party to another party and has the effect of inducing that party into the contract. For example, under certain circumstances, false statements or promises made by a seller of goods regarding the quality or nature of the product that the seller has may constitute misrepresentation. A finding of misrepresentation allows for a remedy of rescission and sometimes damages depending on the type of misrepresentation.

According to Gordon v Selico [1986] it is possible to misrepresent either by words or conduct. Generally, statements of opinion or intention are not statements of fact in the context of misrepresentation.[68] If one party claims specialist knowledge on the topic discussed, then it is more likely for the courts to hold a statement of opinion by that party as a statement of fact.[69]

Such defenses operate to determine whether a purported contract is either (1) void or (2) voidable. Void contracts cannot be ratified by either party. Voidable contracts can be ratified.

Misrepresentation[edit]

Main article: Misrepresentation
Misrepresentation means a false statement of fact made by one party to another party and has the effect of inducing that party into the contract. For example, under certain circumstances, false statements or promises made by a seller of goods regarding the quality or nature of the product that the seller has may constitute misrepresentation. A finding of misrepresentation allows for a remedy of rescission and sometimes damages depending on the type of misrepresentation.

There are two types of misrepresentation: fraud in the factum and fraud in inducement. Fraud in the factum focuses on whether the party alleging misrepresentation knew they were creating a contract. If the party did not know that they were entering into a contract, there is no meeting of the minds, and the contract is void. Fraud in inducement focuses on misrepresentation attempting to get the party to enter into the contract. Misrepresentation of a material fact (if the party knew the truth, that party would not have entered into the contract) makes a contract voidable.
According to Gordon v Selico [1986] it is possible to misrepresent either by words or conduct. Generally, statements of opinion or intention are not statements of fact in the context of misrepresentation.[68] If one party claims specialist knowledge on the topic discussed, then it is more likely for the courts to hold a statement of opinion by that party as a statement of fact.[69]

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Comments from Dan Edstrom:

My understanding in California (and probably most other states) is the signature(s) were put on the note and security instrument and passed to the (escrow) agent for delivery only upon the performance of the specific instructions included in the closing instructions. The homeowner(s) did not manifest a present intent to transfer the documents or title…. Delivery was not possible until the agent followed instructions 100% (specific performance). Their appears to be a presumption of delivery that should be rebutted. In California the test for an effective delivery is the writing passed with the deed (but only if delivery is put at issue).

Here is a quote from an appeal in CA:

We first examine the legal effectiveness of the Greggs deed. Legal delivery of a deed revolves around the intent of the grantor. (Osborn v. Osborn (1954) 42 Cal.2d 358, 363-364.) Where the grantor’s only instructions concerning the transaction are in writing, “`the effect of the transaction depends upon the true construction of the writing. It is in other words a pure question of law whether there was an absolute delivery or not.’ [Citation.]” (Id. at p. at p. 364.) As explained by the Supreme Court, “Where a deed is placed in the hands of a third person, as an escrow, with an agreement between the grantor and grantee that it shall not be delivered to the grantee until he has complied with certain conditions, the grantee does not acquire any title to the land, nor is he entitled to a delivery of the deed until he has strictly complied with the conditions. If he does not comply with the conditions when required, or refuses to comply, the escrow-holder cannot make a valid delivery of the deed to him. [Citations.]” (Promis v. Duke (1929) 208 Cal. 420, 425.) Thus, if the escrow holder does deliver the deed before the buyer complies with the seller’s instructions to the escrow, such purported delivery conveys no title to the buyer. (Montgomery v. Bank of America (1948) 85 Cal.App.2d 559, 563; see also Borgonovo v. Henderson (1960) 182 Cal.App.2d 220, 226-228 [purported assignment of note deposited into escrow held invalid, where maker instructed escrow holder to release note only upon deposit of certain sum of money by payee].)

LAOLAGI v. FIRST AMERICAN TITLE INSURANCE COMPANY, H032523 (Cal. Ct. App. July 31, 2009).

In most cases I have seen the closing instructions state there can be no encumbrances except the new note and security instrument in favor of {the payee of the note}…

Some of the issues with this (encumbrances) would be who provided the actual escrow funding, topre-existing agreements, the step transaction and single transaction doctrines, MERS, payoffs of previous mortgages (to a lender of record), reconveyance (to a lender of record), etc…

Thx,

Dan Edstrom

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Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: acceptance, Belanger, borrower, consideration, disclosure, foreclosure, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, fraud, loan contract, offer, rescission, securitization, trustee | 3 Comments »

Consummation- Is an Act not an Illusion

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Neil Garfield

by William Hudson

Neil Garfield is adamant that if consummation did not occur, there can be no contract. His belief is supported by hundreds of years of contract law (including the marriage contract). In regards to marriage, most people know if consummation occurred, yet when it comes to taking out a securitized loan like a mortgage, most people only assume it did. Without proof one can only speculate that consummation occurred.

Due to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, any lender in America should be capable of producing the needed documentation to prove they own a Mortgage and Note- and that consummation occurred. With the click of a computer mouse, instantaneously the journal entries in the lender’s financial, accounting, and general ledger systems should show that a loan was consummated and the Note was assigned to a valid trust. Instead, the banks resort to forgery and fraud. If they had the documentation, fraud would not be necessary.

Since around 2001 banks have been mocking up documents to create a paper trail to create the illusion of ownership- but in light of all the fabricated document fraud, it is time that homeowners demand to see the money trail and are permitted to do so. The money trail should begin at consummation of the loan between the two parties who agreed to contract: the homeowner and lender. However, this is not the way that consummation works in a securitized mortgage transaction. By design, the homeowner is not allowed to know who they are borrowing funds from- and transparency is of no concern.

Can you imagine this occurring in any other consumer transaction? Imagine the chaos that would ensue, for instance, if you thought you were financing a truck through Ford Credit, yet unbeknownst to you, Honda funded the loan. You may have ended up with the truck, but you may have been induced into a contract you didn’t agree with (especially if your goal was to “buy American”). Why should Mortgage loans be any different? And why should Congress bother passing laws like TILA if the banks are going to ignore consumer protection laws with impunity?

There can be no consummation when the party lending the money is never disclosed to the borrower. A homeowner is conned into believing the party listed on their note and mortgage is actually the party who is taking the risk by lending their own funds- when this party who is named on the Note is an originator- not a lender.

Has anyone stopped to ask why all the secrecy? The only reason for secrecy is to hide the truth- whatever that may be (dark pools? empty trusts? stolen funds?). There is a reason for the deception that begins at the closing table, endures through servicing, and only ends upon sale of the property or payoff.

Consummation under the Federal Truth-in-Lending-Act occurs when the state law on contract or lending says it begins. According to attorney Neil Garfield, “Most state laws require offer, acceptance and consideration. So while the door is open to inconsistent results, in order to find that consummation did happen and that the date of consummation is known, we still must visit the issue of consideration.” Consideration is basically the exchange of something of value in return for the promise or service of the other party. Take note, consideration is not the exchange of value in return for the promise or service of an unidentified third party. However, modern securitization has nothing to do with the name of the original “lender” on the Note that in 99% of all cases did not loan anything of value.

When a homeowner is not provided the name of the party who is actually taking the risk and has skin in the game- they lose their ability to negotiate in good faith with this party (the investors of the trust). Over the span of a 30 year loan, “life” happens. It is terrifying that a bank can use one late payment as an excuse to create a default.

Banks were once responsive to homeowners because they had an actual investment and needed the homeowner to successfully make payments. If a homeowner had a short-term cash flow problem, the banks were willing to work with them- it was in their best interest to do so. Homeowners no longer have the luxury of negotiating with the party who provided the funds, but must attempt to solve any mortgage issues with a loan servicer who is financially rewarded by engineering a default- by failing to provide responsive customer service to the homeowner (or by blatantly misleading the homeowner).

In fact, this week the CFPB announced that consumers made almost 900,000 complaints about their loan servicers between March and April 2016. The complaints center around three areas:

Problems when consumers are unable to pay: Consumers complained of prolonged loss mitigation review processes in which the same documentation was repeatedly requested by their servicer. Consumers also complained that they received conflicting and confusing foreclosure notifications during the loss mitigation review process.
Confusion over loan transfers: Consumers complained that they were often not properly informed that their loan had been transferred. As a result, payments made to either the prior or current servicer around the time of the transfer were not applied to their account.
Communication issues with servicers: Consumers complained that when they were able to speak with their servicer, the information they received was often confusing and did not provide the clarifications they were hoping for.

According to the report, the mortgage companies with the worst records between November 2015 to January 2016 were Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Ocwen, and Nationstar Mortgage. Consumers are not receiving customer care because by design servicers profit when a default can be engineered. Based on the CFPB findings, it is obvious that the longer the servicer can prolong loss mitigation, the more fees they will potentially receive. A default allows them to collect thousands in late fees and penalties; and if they are lucky- foreclose on the home.

The servicer has no skin in the game and is incentivized to create a default by any means necessary- whereas, a true creditor does not want a default. The problem with the way the system is rigged is that the homeowner is prevented from knowing who they borrowed money from and therefore cannot negotiate in good faith with the party who has a vested interest in the homeowner making payment.

The central problem in all securitized mortgages is that the homeowner has no idea who they consummated the loan with. Although it is considered a predatory practice under Regulation Z to conceal the true lender, no government regulatory agency has stopped the practice of concealing the identity of the true lender at closing. The TILA laws are on the books, but have no teeth.

Neil has said in the past that consummation only occurs after the closing agent receives and disburses the funds according to the alleged loan contract. Therefore, consummation does not occur on the date that the closing papers are signed. The requirement of giving the borrower disclosure papers three days before the closing is complete might put some daylight between the assumption that consummation occurred on the day the papers were signed.

Garfield states, “The simple argument is that the industry practice has always been that the borrower signs papers and THEN the closing agent requests or receives the money for the “loan.”” Therefore, Garfield doubts there is any support for saying that the borrower is contractually obligated to comply with the terms of the note or the mortgage if the money never came at all. Neil Garfield says that where the true problem lies is what occurs in the NEXT step.

“If we can agree that if no money ever came from anyone, the borrower doesn’t owe anyone anything and is not bound by the “facially valid” loan contract, then it follows that if no money came from the named Payee on the note and mortgagee on the mortgage, (beneficiary in a deed of trust), the “borrower” doesn’t owe anything to anyone,” states Garfield. If contract law was strictly followed, the homeowner is under no obligation to repay a party who didn’t lend them a dime.
This is where the issue of consummation becomes difficult to understand. “If money is sent to the closing agent by a party unrelated to the named payee on the note, then under what theory do we say that the note is evidence of the debt? It certainly should not be used to show that the borrower owes the payee any money because the payee did not make the loan and nobody related to the payee made the loan,” Garfield has repeatedly stated. Neil Garfield agrees with the assumption that the borrower owes back the money that was advanced on behalf of the borrower, but that transaction is not a debt nor a contract- it is a potential liability to the party whose funds were used to send to the closing agent.

That claim could not be in contract because the source of funds and the “borrower” never entered into a contract. The liability would be in equity and would exist independently of the false note and false mortgage, which means the claim from a real source of funds would not be subject to the note and mortgage but simply due on the basis of fairness in equity: the borrower received the benefit of the money from the money source and under quantum meruit would be obligated to repay the money.

This is where most people get lost on Garfield’s Rescission theories. Garfield never advocates that money is not owed to someone- what he argues is that the Note and Mortgage represent a transaction that never occurred- and therefore should be rescinded under TILA. Rescission would allow the REAL creditor (or investors) to come to the table and demand/receive payment.

And yet, loan servicers wanting to protect their unlawful gains (at the expense of the investors) are successfully deceiving the courts that consummation did occur. The entire mortgage scheme is rigged by a system of smoke and mirrors. There is evidence that the closing did not occur according to the contract- if the homeowner can manage to obtain the information through Discovery (but in 99% of all lawsuits the bank will not be compelled to reveal actual evidence). The courts could demand sua sponte that the servicer provide the actual business records and settle the matter- but this would reveal the truth that everyone has gone to great lengths to keep hidden.

When Congress wrote the Truth in Lending Act, they deliberately stated that the homeowner could rescind the Note within three days of consummation (they specifically did not say origination). The Supreme Court in Jesninoski reinforced the right to rescind and TILA was enacted so that banks would self-regulate and not devise reckless and predatory schemes (like what has happened). The homeowners and investors should not be punished for the deliberate obfuscation of the true terms of the “loan”.

All this analysis is aimed at one single point, to wit: that the source of funds does not meet the definition of a creditor to whom the money is owed. Most people understand Neil Garfield’s point but reject it regardless of how well it is founded in law and fact. They reject it because it upsets the mortgage securitization scheme started 20 years ago by the investment banks. It would mean that there is no creditor, there is no contract, and there is no obligation to comply with the payment terms under the note and mortgage. This is an unacceptable result for most people. They worry that the entire system would collapse if they were to follow the law as it has been written and decided for centuries.

But the feared consequence is not based in fact. The entire system does not collapse under this scenario. What happens is that the investors who bought fake Mortgage backed securities could deal directly with the borrowers and workout the terms of a mortgage loan that is both legal and enforceable. More importantly it would be a loan that would survive in value to the investor. As things stand now the Wall Street banks are driving as many cases as possible toward foreclosure because that is the way they collect the most fees — when the equity in the property is no longer higher than the claims for money upon liquidation.

So accepting the application of existing law as stated here, would mean that investors would suffer much lower losses and the homeowners would regain the equity in their homes or at least the prospect of equity while the wild terms and wild appraised prices of the past are abandoned. Obviously the SERVICERS would hate this equitable solution- because it would cost them the huge profits they receive through document fabrication, robosigning and other creative “solutions” that require fraud.

Let’s remember that when TARP was first announced, it was all about losses from mortgage defaults. When the government realized that homeowner defaults had little to do with TARP they expanded its meaning to include failing mortgage backed securities. But there were no bank losses from MBS because the banks were selling MBS not buying them. So then they expanded it again to include losses from credit default swaps, insurance contracts and other hedge products.

This was all based upon the premise that there MUST be a loan contract in there somewhere. There wasn’t in most cases. Nearly all of the foreclosures that have been rubber stamped by the court system were not only unnecessary, they were patently illegal based upon false representations from the banks. The foreclosure was a legal cover for all the prior illegal actions.

With that being said, if the homeowner only recently discovered that consummation did not occur; does the 3-year TILA window is likely untolled and the 3-day/3-year expiration time may never have commenced in the first place. Remember that according to law, Rescission is the act of rescinding; the cancellation of a contract and the return of the parties to the positions they would have had if the contract had not been made; rescission may be brought about by decree or by mutual consent.

Congress did not give you the Right to Cancel under TILA but the Right to Rescind. Cancellation means termination of the entire agreement by the act of parties/law. Whereas Rescission places the person back to the condition they were PRIOR to the contract; cancellation merely voids the contract and has no restorative properties. Congress could have simply allowed homeowners to cancel under TILA, but instead opted for Rescission. Cancellation would have stopped the bleeding, but Rescission actually reattaches the Limb. The judiciary must recognize that Congress used the words CONSUMMATION and RESCISSION not ORIGINATION and CANCELLATION in the Truth-in-Lending-Act so why should any Judge ignore the intention of the Act? Rescission will eventually be won based on lack of consummation- but it may take another hearing before the Supreme Court before the state courts accept what consummation means.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: consideration, consummation, creditor, foreclosure, fraud, Sarbanes-Oxley Act, standing | 19 Comments »

DEBT vs. Note: What is the difference?

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Neil Garfield

current trial court decisions are getting reversed because the courts are waking up to the reality of the rule of law. What they have been following is an off the books rule of “anything but a free house.”

the Courts may think they are saving the financial system, the economy and our society from disintegration, but in truth they are undermining all three.

A recent Yale Law Review article eviscerates the assumptions of a “free house” for the homeowners and destroys the myth that somehow that policy has saved the nation. Yale-In Defense of Free Houses 2016 03 23

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THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.

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Like many other cases, current trial court decisions are getting reversed because the courts are waking up to the reality of the rule of law. What they have been following is an off the books rule of “anything but a free house.” A recent Yale Law Review Article eviscerates the assumptions of a free house for the homeowners and destroys the myth that somehow that policy has saved the nation.

The Trial Judges are making the assumption that there is an underlying debt and an underlying liability of the homeowner to make a payment to the parties in litigation even if the paperwork was found to be defective. Or worse, they are disregarding the rule of law altogether and ruling for the banks and servicers because of policy reasoning (a province exclusively reserved to the legislative branch of government and excluded from the judicial branch).

The key legal analysis goes back to basic contract law pounded into our heads in the first year of law school, to wit: the note is not the debt, it is evidence of the debt.” So if there is no debt and the homeowner challenges on that basis, the homeowner SHOULD win every time. The mistake made by pro se litigants and lawyers alike is that they cannot conceive of the notion of “there is no debt.” That’s because they don’t complete the sentence, to wit: There is no debt owed to the beneficiary or claimed beneficiary on the deed of trust (non judicial states) or there is no debt owed to the mortgagee or claimed mortgagee named in the mortgage.”

Basic contract law: an enforceable contract must contain three elements and a hidden fourth element. The three key elements without which there can be no enforcement are OFFER, ACCEPTANCE AND CONSIDERATION. The hidden fourth element is that contracts in violation of public policy are void.

In nearly all cases where there are claims of securitization and most where no such claims are brought forward (but still exist) they are missing consideration (i.e., PAYMENT) from the origination and/or acquisition of the loan. The DEBT was never created in favor of the party receiving documents.

The documents, including the note refer to a transaction in which the originator loaned money to the homeowner. This is nearly always NOT true. And the contract, even if it existed, is part of a larger plot to defraud both the borrowers and the investors in which the originators, brokers, servicers, Master Servicers and Trusts are the fraudsters.

These cases thus involve contracts to violate both laws and public policy — particularly those in which prior agreement is executed in which the parties to agree to create table funded loans as a pattern and practice — something which REG Z clearly says is PREDATORY PER SE.

Either predatory or predatory per se mean something or they don’t. But if they mean anything they set the bar such that parties who violate this provision cannot claim “clean hands.” And if the court of equity is being asked by the violators for the equitable remedy of foreclosure sale based upon, at best, dubious documentation (without proof of the debt or who owns the debt) then the availability of foreclosure should be barred.

Lawyers must meet this challenge head-on and stop pussy footing around. If the alleged loan was table funded, then there was never any completed loan contract. If the money came from a third party, then that third party has the right to the note and mortgage — if the note and mortgage are executed in favor of that third party or if the “originator” was in privity with the third party through contract. There is no other way.

BUT if the identified third party was just a conduit for a source of funds outside the circle of the originator and the party through whom the funds were sourced, then the homeowner owes the DEBT to someone else. What Wall Street banks did in its simplest form is to relieve the investors of money in such a way that the investors would see very little of it ever returned because the Wall Street banks had reached for and grabbed the holy grail of finance — selling financing for nonexistent entities and keeping the proceeds.

And the same logic then applies. If the FOURTH party was somehow in privity (contract) with the originator then the homeowner owes the debt to that fourth party. BUT unless the note and mortgage are properly delivered and executed in favor of the fourth party, neither the fourth party nor any agent or “servicer” for the fourth party can claim rights under the note and mortgage which should never have been released, delivered or recorded in the first place.

In short, without BOTH the money trial and the paper trail being synchronized there is no loan contract. And that means there is no valid note or mortgage which are then VOID ab initio. Can the real source of funds collect? Yes of course, but they do not own a claim that is secured by a mortgage or deed of trust. And they cannot use the note as direct evidence of the debt. This has always been the law. Ironically, nearly all “borrowers” would gladly execute notes and mortgages with the real investors that would be fully enforceable and would represent workouts that would protect both the investor and the borrower. But in order to do that, the banks and servicers in the false securitization industry must be benched and a new group of entities employed directly by investors must arise.

As stated in the recent Yale Law Review article, document defects do not occur as a result of any action or fault of the alleged borrower and there is no reason not to apply the rule of law to any situation, much less one in which a party can lose their personal residence.

The theory of anything except a free house for the homeowner is full of holes that are amply challenged in the Yale Law Review article. As the authors point out, the trial judges may think they are saving the financial system, the economy and our society from disintegration, but in truth they are undermining all three.

See Yale-In Defense of Free Houses 2016 03 23

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: consideration, debt, foreclosure defense, foreclosure offense, fraud, free house, note, securitization, YALE LAW REVIEW | 22 Comments »

Two Different Worlds — Note and Mortgage

Posted on February 19, 2015 by Neil Garfield

Further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

No radio show tonight because of birthday celebration — I’m 68 and still doing this

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The enforcement of promissory notes lies within the context of the marketplace for currency and currency equivalents. The enforcement of mortgages on real property lies within the the context of the marketplace for real estate transactions. While certainty is the aim of public policy in those two markets, the rules are different and should not be ignored.

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see

Click to access PEB_Report_111411.pdf

This article is not a substitute for getting advice from an attorney licensed to practice in the jurisdiction in which your property is or was located.

Back in 2008 I had some correspondence and telephone conversations with an attorney in Chicago, Robert Wutscher when I was writing about the reality of the way in which banks were doing what they called “securitization of mortgages.” Of course then they were denying that there were any trusts, denying that any transfers occurred and were suing in the name of the originator or MERS or anyone but the party who actually had their money used in loan transactions. It wasn’t done the right way because the obvious intent was to play a shell game in which the banks would emerge as the apparent principal party in interest under the illusion created by certain presumptions attendant to being the “holder” of a note. For each question I asked him he replied that Aurora in that case was the “holder.” No matter what the question was, he replied “we’re the holder.” I still have the letter he sent which also ignored the rescission from the homeowner whose case I was inquiring about for this blog.

He was right that the banks would be able to bend the law on rescission at the level of the trial courts because Judges just didn’t like TILA rescission. I knew that in the end he would lose on that proposition eventually and he did when Justice Scalia, in a terse opinion, simply told us that Judges and Justices were wrong in all those trial court decisions and even appellate court decisions that applied common law theories to modify the language of the Federal Law (TILA) on rescission. And now bank lawyers are facing the potential consequences of receiving notices of TILA rescission where the bank simply ignored them instead of preserving the rights of the “lender” by filing a declaratory action within 20 days of the rescission. By operation of law, the note and mortgage were nullified, ab initio. Which means that any further activity based upon the note and mortgage was void. And THAT means that the foreclosures were void.

Is discussing the issue of the “holder” with lawyers and even doing a tour of seminars I found that the confusion that was apparent for lay people was also apparent in lawyers. They looked at the transaction and the rights to enforce as one single instrument that everyone called “the mortgage.” They looked at me like I had three heads when I said, no, there are three parts to every one of these illusory transactions and the banks fail outright on two of them.

The three parts are the debt, the note and the mortgage. The debt arises when the borrower receives money. The presumption is that it is a loan and that the borrower owes the money back. it isn’t a gift. There should be no “free house” discussion here because we are talking about money, not what was done with the money. Only a purchase money mortgage loan involves the house and TILA recognizes that. Some of the rules are different for those loans. But most of the loans were not purchase money mortgages in that they were either refinancing, or combined loans of 1st mortgage plus HELOC. In fact it appears that ultimately nearly all the outstanding loans fall into the category of refinancing or the combined loan and HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit that exactly matches the total loan requirements of the transaction (including the purchase of the home).

The debt arises by operation of law in favor of the party who loaned the money. The banks diverged from the obvious and well-established practice of the lender being the same party as the party named on the note as payee and on the mortgage as mortgagee (or beneficiary under a Deed of Trust). The banks did this through a process known as “Table Funded Loans” in which the real lender is concealed from the borrower. And they did this through agreements frequently called “Assignment and Assumption” Agreements, which by contract called for both parties (the originator and the aggregator to violate the laws governing disclosure (TILA and frequently state law) which means by definition that the contract called for an illegal act that is by definition a contract in contravention of public policy.

A loan contract is created by operation of law in which the borrower is obligated to pay back the loan to the source of the funds with or without a written instrument. If the loan contract (comprised of offer, acceptance and consideration) does not exist, then there is nothing to enforce at law although it is possible to still force the borrower to repay the money to the actual source of funds through a suit in equity — mainly unjust enrichment. The banks, through their lawyers, argue that the Federal disclosure requirements should be ignored. I think it is pretty clear that Justice Scalia and a unanimous United States Supreme Court think that argument stinks. It is the bank’s argument that should be ignored, not the law.

Congress passed TILA specifically to protect consumers of financial products (loans) from the overly burdensome and overly complex nature of loan documents. This argument about what is important and what isn’t has already been addressed in Congress and signed into law against the banks’ position that it doesn’t matter whether they really follow the law and disclose all the parties involved in the transaction, the true identity of the lender, the compensation of all the parties that made money as a result of the origination of the loan transaction. Regulation Z states that a pattern of behavior (more than 5) in which loans are table funded (disclosure of real lender withheld from borrower) is PREDATORY PER SE.

If it is predatory per se then there are remedies available to the borrower which potentially include treble damages, attorneys fees etc. Equally important if not more so is that a transaction, whether illusory or real, that is predatory per se, is therefore against public policy and the party seeking to enforce an otherwise enforceable document cannot do so because of the doctrine of unclean hands. In fact, if the transaction is predatory per se, it is dirty hands per se. And this is where Judges get stuck and so do many lawyers. The outcome of that unavoidable analysis is, they say, a free house. And their remedy is to give the party with unclean hands a free house (because they paid nothing for the origination or acquisition of the loan). I think the Supreme Court will not look kindly upon this “legislating from the bench.” And I think the Court has already signaled its intent to hold everyone to the strict construction of TILA and Regulation Z.

So there are two reason the debt can’t be enforced the way the banks want. (1) There is no loan contract because the source of the money and the borrower never agreed to anything and neither one knew about the other. (2) the mortgage cannot be enforced because it is an action in equity and the shell game of parties tossing the paperwork around all have unclean hands. And there is a third reason as well — while the note might be enforceable based merely on an endorsement, the mortgage is not enforceable unless the enforcer paid for it (Article 9, UCC).

And THAT is where the confusion really starts — which bank lawyers depend on every time they go to court. Bank lawyers add to the confusion by using the tired phrase of “the note follows the mortgage and the mortgage follows the note.” At one time this was a completely true presumption backed up by real facts. But now the banks are asking the courts to apply the presumption even when the courts actually know that the facts presumed by the legal presumption are untrue.

Notes and mortgages exist in two different marketplaces or different worlds, if you like. Public policy insists that notes that are intended to be negotiable remain negotiable and raise certain presumptions. The holder of a note might very well be able to sue and win a judgment ON THE NOTE. And the judgment holder might be able to record a judgment lien and foreclose on it subject to homestead exemptions.

But it isn’t as simple as the banks make it out to be.

If someone pays for the note in good faith and without knowledge of the borrower’s defenses when the note is not in default, THAT holder can enforce the note against the signor or maker of the note regardless of lack of consideration or anything else unless there is a provable defense of fraud and perhaps conspiracy. But any other holder steps into the shoes of the original lender. And if there was no consummated loan contract between the payee on the note and the borrower because the payee never loaned any money to the borrower, then the holder might have standing to sue but they don’t have the evidence to win the suit. The borrower still owes the money to whoever was the source, but the “holder” of the note doesn’t get a judgment. There is a difference between standing to sue and a prima facie case needed to win. Otherwise everyone would get one of those mechanical forging machines and sign the name of someone with money and sue them on a note they never signed. Or they would promise to loan money, get the signed note and then not complete the loan contract by making the loan.

So public policy demands that there be reasonable certainty in the negotiation of unqualified promises to pay. BUT public policy expressed in the UCC Article 9 says that if you want to enforce a mortgage you must not only have some indication that it was transferred to you, you must also have paid valuable consideration for the mortgage.

Without proof of payment, there is no prima facie case for enforcement of the mortgage, but it does curiously remain on the chain of title of the property (public records) unless nullified by the fact that the mortgage was executed as collateral for the note which was NOT a true representation of the loan contract based upon the real debt that arose by operation of law. The public policy is preserve the integrity of public records in the real estate marketplace. That is the only way to have reasonable certainty of title and encumbrances.

Forfeiture, an equitable remedy, must be done with clean hands based upon a real interest in the alleged default — not just a pile of paper that grows each year as banks try to convert an assignment of mortgage into a substitute for consideration.

Hence being the “holder” might mean you have the right to sue on the note but without being a holder in due course or otherwise paying fro the mortgage, there is no automatic basis for enforcing the mortgage in favor of a party with no economic interest in the mortgage.

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: assignment, consideration, debt, endorsement, enforcement of debt, enforcement of mortgage, enforcement of note, loan contract, Mortgage, note, Regulation Z, rescission, Scalia, TILA | 107 Comments »

Modification Offers Are Enforceable Contracts

Posted on January 8, 2015 by Neil Garfield

For further information please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688

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We have all seen it, heard and experienced it over and over again. In this case Wells Fargo offered a “temporary” modification, it was accepted and the trial payments were made. Wells Fargo said the modification offer and acceptance lacked consideration — the height of arrogance since they have no transaction with consideration supporting their claim of ownership of the debt, note or mortgage.

Wells disavowed the settlement and went forward with foreclosure. The homeowner’s claim to enforce the modification contract was dismissed for failure to state a cause of action, agreeing with Wells Fargo that there was no consideration. The appellate court reversed stating that there was consideration and that it was more than adequate. There are now hundreds of cases in which trial judges and appellate courts have enforced the modification agreements.

Here is one you can look at:

http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/Unpublished/132390.U.pdf

Filed under: foreclosure | Tagged: acceptacne, consideration, contract, FORECLOSURE SETTLEMENT, LOAN MODIFICATION, offer, Wells Fargo | 17 Comments »

Confronting the Ridicule of Counsel for the Bank

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Neil Garfield

For more information on foreclosure offense, expert witness consultations and foreclosure defense please call 954-495-9867 or 520-405-1688. We offer litigation support in all 50 states to attorneys. We refer new clients without a referral fee or co-counsel fee unless we are retained for litigation support. Bankruptcy lawyers take note: Don’t be too quick admit the loan exists nor that a default occurred and especially don’t admit the loan is secured. FREE INFORMATION, ARTICLES AND FORMS CAN BE FOUND ON LEFT SIDE OF THE BLOG. Consultations available by appointment in person, by Skype and by phone.

The Banks: Consideration is Irrelevant, Really? Then so is payment!

Posted on March 24, 2014 by Neil Garfield

The issue is what are the elements of the loan contract? Who are the parties? And who can enforce it?

I would agree that an overpayment at closing from the source of funds is rare. What is not rare and in fact common is that the wire transfer instructions that accompany the wire transfer receipt often instructs the closing agent to refund any overpayment to the party who wired the money — not the originator. This leads to questions. If it is a true warehouse lender, such instructions could be explained without affecting the validity of the note or mortgage.

In truth, the procedures used usually prevent the originator from ever touching the flow of funds. Wall Street banks were afraid of fraud — that if the originators could touch the money, they might have faked a number of closings and taken the money. In short, the investment banks were afraid that the originators would not use the money the way it was intended. So instead of doing that, they created relationships by having the originators sign Assignment and Assumption agreements before they started lending. This agreement says the loan belongs to an “aggregator” that is merely a controlled entity of the broker dealer. But the money doesn’t come from either the originator or the aggregator. Thus they have an agreement that controls the loan closings but no consideration for that either.

But this is a lot like the insurance payments, proceeds of credit default swaps etc. The contracts almost always specifically waive subrogation or any other right of action against the borrowers or any other enforcement of the notes or mortgages. It has been presumed that these contracts were for the mitigation of losses and that is true. But they are payable to the broker dealers and not the trust or trust beneficiaries. The investment banks committed fraud when they represented to the insurers, FDIC, Fannie, Freddie and CDS counterparties that they had an insurable interest. Those parties presumed that the investment banks were creating these hedge products for the benefit of the owner of the mortgage bonds or the owner of the loans. But it was paid to the investment banks. That is why all those parties are claiming losses that resulted from fraud — all of which have resulted in settlements (except the Countrywide verdict for fraud).

The similarity is this: in both the closing with borrowers and the closings with investors the same fraud occurred. When dealing with the closing agent they interposed their nominee in the closing which resulted in no note and no mortgage in favor of the investors or the trust. Whether the closing agent is liable is another issue. The point is that the money came from a third party which was a controlled entity of the broker dealer. Thus the investor gets a promise from a trust that is not funded while their money is used to pay fees, create the illusion of trading profits for the broker dealer and funding mortgages.

The wire transfer is not a wire transfer from the originator, nor from the bank at which the originator maintains any account. The wire transfer instructions and the wire transfer receipt fail to identify the actual source of funds and fail to refer to the originator as a real party. If they did, there would not be a problem for the banks to enforce the note and mortgage. If they did, the banks would simply show the transaction record and there would be nothing to fight about.

The only occasion in which the banks appeared to be willing to provide adequate documentation for consideration appears to be in a merger or acquisition with the party that was named as the mortgagee in the mortgage document or the beneficiary in the deed of trust. And all the other transactions, the banks say that consideration is irrelevant or they quote the law that says that courts cannot question the adequacy of consideration. They are dodging the issue. We are not saying that consideration was not adequate; what we are saying is that there was no consideration at all. The banks are fighting this issue because when it comes out that there really was no consideration the entire house of cards could fall.

The issue is counterintuitive because everyone knows that there was money on the closing table. Unless the issue is argued and presented with clarity, it will appear to the judge that you are trying to say that there was no money on the closing table. And when a judge hears that, or thinks that he heard that, he or she will not take you seriously. There are three parts to every contract — offer, acceptance, and consideration. A few courts have started to deal with this question. In the context of foreclosure litigation all three elements are in question. If the lenders are investors who believed that their money was being put into a trust that they were beneficiaries of a trust, they are unaware of the fact that their money is being offered to borrowers on terms that are contrary to their instructions. And the loan is not made on behalf of the investors or the trust. It is made on behalf of some sham entity controlled by the broker dealer. Sometimes the origination is made by an actual bank that is acting in the capacity of a sham lender. Either way the money came from the investors.

So the issue is not whether there was money on the table but rather whether there was a meeting of the minds between the investors and lenders in the homeowners as borrowers. The lender documents (trust documents) reveal far different terms of repayment than the borrower documents. Each of them signed on to a deal that actually didn’t exist because neither of them had agreed to the same terms.

The fact that money was on the table at the time of the alleged closing of the loan can only mean that the homeowner owed money to repay the source of the money. This duty to repay arises by operation of law and extends from the homeowner to the investor despite the lack of any documentation that explicitly states that. The result is false documentation in which the homeowner was induced to sign under the mistaken belief that the payee on the note and the mortgagee on the mortgage was the source of funds.

If you receive funds from John Smith and the note and mortgage are drafted for the benefit of Nancy Jones as “lender” would that bother you? What would you do as closing agent? Why?

Filed under: CORRUPTION, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure, foreclosure defenses, GARFIELD KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, investment banking, Investor, MBS TRUSTEE, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Pleading, Servicer, Title, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: acceptance, borrowers, closing table, consideration, contract law, debt, documentation, homeowners, investors, lenders, Mortgage, note, offer | 67 Comments »

The Confusion Over Consideration: If they didn’t pay for it, they have nothing against the property

Posted on March 21, 2014 by Neil Garfield

There have been multiple questions directed at me over the issue of consideration arising from presumptions made about a note and mortgage that appear to be facially valid. Those presumptions are rebuttable and indeed in many cases would be rebutted by the actual facts. That is why asserting the right defenses is so important to set the foundation for discovery.

The cases thrown at me usually relate to adequacy of consideration. Some relate wrongly to Article 3 as to enforcement of the note. I agree that enforcement of the note is easier than enforcement of the mortgage. But that is the point. If they really want the property even a questionable holder of the note might be able to get a civil judgment and that judgment might result in a lien against the property and it might even be foreclosed if the property is not homestead. That is how we protect creditors and property owners. To enforce the mortgage, the claim must be much stronger — it must be filed by a party who actually has the risk of loss because they paid for it.

One case just sent to me is a 2000 case 4th DCA in Florida. Ahmad v Cobb. 762 So 2d 944. The quote I lifted out of that case which was presented to me as though it contradicted my position is the most revealing:

“First, there is no doubt that Ahmad, as the assignee of the Resolution Trust Corporation, owned the rights to the Cobb Corner, Inc. note and mortgage and to the guarantees securing those obligations. He obtained a partial

[762 So.2d 947]

summary judgment which fixed the validity, priority and extent of his debt. Any questions as to the adequacy of the consideration he paid were settled in that ruling.“

That is your answer. The time to contest consideration is best done before judgment when you don’t need to prove fraud by clear and convincing evidence. We are also not challenging adequacy of consideration — except that if it recites $10 and other value consideration for a $500,000 loan it casts doubt as to whether the third leg of the stool is actually present — offer, acceptance and consideration. People tend to forget that this is essentially contract law and the contract for loan is no exception to the laws of contract.

We are challenging whether there was any consideration at all because I already know there was none. There couldn’t be. The consideration flowed directly from the investors to the borrower. That is the line of sight of the debt, in most cases.

The closing agent mistakenly or intentionally applied funds from a third party who was not disclosed on the settlement documents. Without receiving any money from the “originator”, the closing agent proceeded to get the signature from the borrower promising to pay the originator when it was a third party who gave the closing agent the funds. If this was a “warehouse loan” in which the originator was borrowing the money with a risk of loss and the liability to pay it back then the originator is a proper party and any assignments from the originator would be valid — if they were supported by consideration. Some loans do fit that criteria but most do not.

I repeat that this is not an attempt to get out of the debt altogether. It is an attack on the note and mortgage because the actual terms of repayment were either never agreed between the investors and the borrowers or are as set forth in the PSA and NOT the note and mortgage.

If the third party (source of funds) is NOT in privity with the originator (which is the structure we are dealing with because the broker dealers wanted to shield themselves from liability for violating fair lending laws) then the closing agent should have obtained instructions from the source of funds as to the application of funds wired into escrow. Anyone who didn’t would be an idiot. But most of them, under that definition would qualify. The closing agent would also be wrong to have demanded the signature of the borrower on documents that (a) did not reveal the source of funds and (b) did not contain all the terms of repayment, as recited in the PSA.

The foreclosure crowd is saying the PSA is irrelevant — but only when it suits them. They are saying that the PSA gives them the authority to proceed with foreclosure but that the terms of the PSA are not relevant. That is crazy, but up until now judges have been buying it because they have not been presented with the fact pattern and legal argument that we are asserting.

In summary, we are saying there was NO CONSIDERATION. We are not attacking adequacy of consideration. I am saying there was no actual transaction between the originator and the borrower and there was no actual transaction between the assignor, indorsor, and the assignee or indorsee. Article 9 of the UCC is clear.

The terms of enforcement of a note govern a looser interpretation of when negotiable paper can be enforced. But the terms of a mortgage cannot be enforced by anyone unless they obtain it for value. Value is consideration. We are saying there wasn’t any consideration. Any decision to the contrary is wrong and can be contested with contrary decisions that are all correct and can be found not only in the public records but in treatises.

And this is absolutely necessary. In a mortgage foreclosure or even attachment, the party seeking the forfeiture must show that this forfeiture is necessary to secure repayment of a debt. It must also show that without this forfeiture, it will suffer a loss. In so doing they establish grounds not only for the foreclosure judgment but also for the foreclosure sale.

As pointed out in the above case, the creditor is the one who submits a creditor’s bid by definition. If the party bringing the action cannot satisfy the elements of a creditor in real money terms, then they are not permitted to bid anything other than cash. Allowing a party who did not acquire the mortgage rights for value would enable strangers to the transaction to acquire property for free, except the costs of litigation. Thus the “free house” argument is specious. It is a distraction from the real facts as to who is getting a free house.

Filed under: CASES, CORRUPTION, evidence, expert witness, foreclosure defenses, GARFIELD KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motions, Pleading, Servicer, Title, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: adequacy of consideration, consideration, contract law, credit bid, creditor, creditor bid, discovery, foreclosure sale | 170 Comments »

BeforeYou Open Your Mouth Or Write Anything Down, Know What You Are Talking About

Posted on December 26, 2013 by Neil Garfield

EDITOR’S NOTE: By popular demand I am writing a new workbook that is up to date on the theories and practices of real estate loans, documentation, securitizations and effective enforcement and foreclosure of the collateral (real property — i.e., the house). The book will be finished around the end of January. If you want to purchase an advance subscription to an advance copy we can give you a discount off the price of $599. You will receive the final edit drafts of each section as completed. And your comments might be included in the final text with attribution. This is an excerpt from what I have done so far ( the references to “boxes” is a reference to artwork that has not yet been completed but the meaning is clear enough from the words):

[Note: I did borrow some phrases and cites from Judge Jennifer Bailey’s Bench Book for Judges in Dade County. But things have changed substantially since she wrote that guide and my book is intended to update the various treatises, books and articles on the subject of mortgage related litigation in the era of securitization]

INTRODUCTION

The massive volume of foreclosures and real estate closings have resulted in a failure of the judicial system — both Judges and Attorneys to scrutinize the transactions and foreclosures and other enforcement actions for compliance with basic contract law. This starts with whether there is an actual loan at the base of the tree of assignments, endorsements, powers of attorney etc. If the party at the base of the tree did not in fact make any loan and was not possessed of any actual or apparent authority to represent the party who DID make the loan, then the instruments executed in favor of the originator are void, not voidable. This is simply because the loan contract like any contract requires offer, acceptance and consideration. Lacking any meeting of the minds and/or consideration, there was no contract regardless of what one of the parties signed.

The interesting issue at the start of our investigation is how to define the loan contract. Is it a contract that arises by operation of statutory or common law? Is it a contract that arises by execution of instruments? What if the borrower executes an instruments that acknowledges receipt of money he never received from the party he thought was giving him the money? Is it possible for the written instruments to create a conflict between the presumptions at law arising from written, properly executed instruments and the real facts that gave rise to a contract that was created by operation of law?

These questions come up because there is no actual written loan contract. The borrower and lender do not come together and sign a contract for loan. The contract is implied from the documents and actions contemporaneously occurring at or around the time of the loan “closing.” It appears to be a case of first impression that the borrower is induced to sign documents in favor of someone who, at the end of the day, does NOT give him the loan. This never was a defect before the era of claims of securitization. Now it is central to the issue of establishing the identity and rights of a creditor and debtor and whether the debt is secured or unsecured.

Even where the loan contract is solid, the same legal and factual problems arise at the time of the alleged acquisition of the loan where assignments lack consideration because, like the above origination, an undisclosed third party was the actual source of funds.

Definitions:

1) Debt: in the context of loans, the amount of money due from the borrower to the lender. This may include successors to the lender. In a simple mortgage loan the amount of money due, the identity of the borrower and the identity of the lender are clear. In cases where the mortgage loan is subject to claims of assignments, transfers, sales or securitization by either the borrower or the party claiming to be the lender or the successor to the lender, there are questions of fact and law that must be determined by the court based on the method by which the money advanced to or on behalf of the borrower that leads to a finding by the court of the identity of the party who advanced the money for the origination of the debt or for the acquisition of the debt.

a) In all cases the debt arises by operation of law at the moment that the borrower receives the advance of money from a lender regardless of the method utilized and regardless of the validity of any instruments that were executed by either the borrower or the lender.

i) The acceptance of the money by the borrower raises a strong presumption that the advance of money in the context of the situation was not a gift.

ii) In simple loans the legal instruments that were executed by the borrower at the loan closing are presumptively supported by consideration as expressed in the note or mortgage and a valid contract presumptively exists such that the court can enforce the note and the mortgage.

b) The factual circumstances and any written instruments that were executed by the parties as part of a loan contract govern terms of repayment of the debt.

c) Enforcement of the repayment obligation of the borrower requires either a lawsuit on the loan of money or a lawsuit on a promissory note.

i) If the lawsuit is on the loan of money plaintiff must state the ultimate facts upon which relief could be granted including the factual circumstances of the loan and the fact that the loan was made. In Florida — F.R.C.P. 1.110 (b), Form 1.936

ii) The lawsuit is on a note plaintiff must state the ultimate facts upon which relief could be granted including that the plaintiff owns and holds the note, that Defendant owes the Plaintiff money, and state the amount of money that is owed. In Florida — F.R.C.P. 1.110 (b), Form 1.934

(1)Where the Plaintiff alleges it is a party by virtue of a sale, assignment, transfer or endorsement of the note, Plaintiffs frequently fail to allege the required elements in which case the Court should dismiss the complaint — unless the Defendant has already admitted the debt, the note, the mortgage, and the default.

(2)The burden of pleading and proving the required elements is on the Plaintiff and cannot be shifted to the defendant without violating the constitutional requirements of due process.

(3)Requiring the Defendant to raise a required but missing element of a defective complaint filed by a Plaintiff would require the Defendant to raise the missing element and then deny it as an attempt at stating an affirmative defense that raises no issue other than an element that was required to be in the complaint of the Plaintiff. This is reversible error in that it improperly shifts the burden of pleading onto the Defendant and requires the Defendant to prove facts mostly in the sole control of the Defendant and which would establish standing to bring the action.

d) In those cases where the loan is subject to claims of assignments, transfers, sales or securitization by either party the court must decide on a case-by-case basis whether the legal consideration for the loan (i.e., the advance of money from lender to borrower or for the benefit of the borrower) supports the debt described in the legal instruments that were executed by the borrower at the loan closing.

i) If the Court finds that the legal instruments that were executed by the borrower at the loan closing are not supported by consideration, then the debt simply exists by operation of law and is not secured.

(1)Such a finding could only be based on the court determining that the lender described in the legal instruments is a different party than the party who actually loaned the money.

(2)Warehouse lending arrangements may be sufficient for the court to determine that the named payee on the note or the identified lender supplied consideration. The court must determine whether the warehouse lender was an actual lender or a strawman, nominee or conduit.

ii) If the court finds that the legal instruments that were executed by the borrower at the loan closing are supported by consideration, then a valid contract may be found to exist that the court can enforce.

2) Mortgage: a contract in which a borrower agrees that the lender may sell the real property (as described in the mortgage) for the purposes of satisfying a debt described in a promissory note that is described in the mortgage contract. It must be a written instrument securing the payment of money or advances made to or on behalf of the borrower. A lien to secure payment of assessments for condominiums, cooperatives and homeowner association is treated as a mortgage contract, pursuant to the enabling documents. See state statutes. For example, F.S. 702.09, Fla. Stat. (2010)

a) a mortgage, if properly perfected, creates a specific lien against the property and is not a conveyance of legal title or of the right of possession to the real property described in the mortgage contract. See state statutes. For example section 697.02, Fla. Stat. (2010), Fla. Nat’l Bank v brown, 47 So 2d 748 (1949).

b) Mortgagee: the party to home the real property is pledged as collateral against the debt described in the note. Mortgagee is presumptively the party named in the mortgage contract. With the advent of MERS and other situations where there is an assignment of the mortgage (expressly or by operation of law) the named mortgagee might be a strawman or nominee for a party described as the lender. In such cases there is an issue of fact as to perfection of the mortgage contract and therefore the mortgage encumbrance resulting from the recording of the mortgage contract. See state statutes. For example F.S. 721.82(6), Fla. Stat. (2010).

i) In Florida the term mortgagee refers to the lender, the secured party or the holder of the mortgage lien. There are several questions of fact and law that the court must determine in order to define and apply these terms.

c) Mortgagor

d) Lender: the party who loaned money to the borrower. If the lender was identified in the mortgage contract by name then the mortgage contract is most likely enforceable.

i) If the lender described in the mortgage contract is a strawman, nominee or conduit then there is an issue of fact as to whether any party could claim to be a secured party under the mortgage contract. Under such circumstances the mortgage contract must be treated as naming no identified secured party. Whether this results in a finding that the mortgage contract is not complete, not perfected or not enforceable is a question of fact that is decided on a case-by-case basis.

e) No right to jury trial exists for enforcement of provisions of the mortgage. However, a right to jury trial exists if timely demanded provided that the foreclosing party seeks judgment on the note or the loan, to wit: financial damages for financial injury suffered by the Plaintiff.

i) Bifurcation of the trial for damages and trial for enforcement of the mortgage contract may be necessary if the basis for the enforcement of the mortgage is non-payment of the note. Any properly raised affirmative defenses relating to setoff or enforceability of the note would be raised in the case for damages.

ii) In that case the trial on the breach of the note would first be needed to render a verdict on the default and then a trial on enforcement of the mortgage would be held before the court without a jury. Any properly raised defense relating to fees and other costs assessed in enforcement of the mortgage contract.

iii) A question of fact and law must be decided by the court in actions in which the plaintiff merely seeks to enforce the mortgage by virtue of an alleged default by the plaintiff but does not seek monetary damages. Florida Form 1.944 (Foreclosure Complaint) is not specific as to whether it is allowing for a single trial without jury.

(1)Since foreclosures are actions in equity, no jury trial is required, but it can be allowed. Since actions for damages require jury trial if properly demanded, it would appear that this issue was not considered when the Florida Form was created.

iv) The requirement that the Plaintiff must own the loan is a requirement that the Plaintiff is not acting in a representative capacity unless it brings the action on behalf of a principal that is disclosed and alleges and attaches to the complaint an instrument that confers upon Plaintiff its authority to do so.

v) Owning the loan means, as set forth in Article 9 of the UCC that the Plaintiff paid for it in money or other consideration that was equivalent to money. The same thing holds true under Article 3 of the UCC for enforcement of the note if the Plaintiff seeks the exalted status of Holder in Due Course which requires payment PLUS no knowledge of defenses all of which must be alleged and proven by the Plaintiff. [1]

3) Note: a written instrument describing the terms of repayment or terms of payment to the payee or a legal successor in interest. In mortgage loans the payor is often described as the borrower. This instrument is usually described in the mortgage contract as the basis for the forced sale of the property. The note is part of a contract for loan of money. It is often considered the total contract. The loan contract is not complete without the loan of money from the payee on the note. If the lender was identified in the note by name then the note is most likely enforceable.

[1] In non-judicial states where the power of sale is recognized as a contractual right, the issue is less clear as to the alignment of parties, claims and defenses. In actions to contest substitution of trustees, notices of sale, notices of default etc. it is the borrower who must bring the lawsuit and in some states they must do so within a very short time frame. Check applicable state statutes. The confusion stems from the fact that the Borrower is actually denying the allegations that would have been made if the alleged beneficiary under the deed of trust had filed a judicial complaint. The trustee on the deed of trust probably should file an action in interpleader if a proper objection is raised but this does not appear to be occurring in practice. This leaves the borrower as the Plaintiff and requiring allegations that would, in judicial states, be either denials or affirmative defenses. Temporary restraining orders are granted but usually only on a showing that the Plaintiff has a likelihood of prevailing — a requirement not imposed on Plaintiffs in judicial states where the lender or “owner” must file the complaint.

Filed under: CASES, evidence, foreclosure, investment banking, Investor, MODIFICATION, Mortgage, Motions, Pleading, TRUST BENEFICIARIES, trustee | Tagged: acceptance, assignment, Bench Book, consideration, debt, foreclosure defense, foreclosure defense workbook, Garfield Continuum, Judge Jennfier bailey, loan contract, Mortgage, mortgage transactions, note, note mortgage, offer, securitization, workbook | 8 Comments »

The Truth: Was the Loan Sold or Not?

Posted on May 2, 2013 by Neil Garfield

see http://livinglies.me/2013/04/29/hawaii-federal-district-court-applies-rules-of-evidence-bonymellon-us-bank-jp-morgan-chase-failed-to-prove-sale-of-note/

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

The selection of an attorney is an important decision and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s Analysis: Suppose you wanted to foreclose on property for which you never made a loan. Suppose you don’t have a lien and never did. Suppose you wanted to do this on a grand scale. How could you get away with it?

If you start with the premise in the preceding paragraph then the entire foreclosure and mortgage mess comes into focus and makes a lot of sense. Conversely if you start with the premise that all mortgage claims are presumptively valid then nothing makes sense and when you try to fix it you get nowhere. That’s what the Florida legislature is attempting to do with Senate Bill 1666 (appropriately numbered).

If you start with the premise that the mortgage claims are valid then it is quite logical and appropriate to conclude that the attempts by borrowers to escape inevitable consequences of their own bad judgment are clogging the court system and that borrowers are essentially abusing their due process rights costing each state billions of dollars in one form or another. But you have to ask yourself why there has been a sudden meteoric rise in the percentage of cases in which the borrower vigorously defends and brings claims against the supposedly valid holder of the note. What if all your assumptions and presumptions are not valid?

This is the essence of the issue confronting the courts, borrowers and their attorneys. And in a display of extreme irony the Wall Street banks even have the borrowers and their attorneys convinced that the loan was closed and the loan was sold. “The Loan” refers to the transaction that is memorialized in the loan documents. “The sale” refers to the transaction in which the loan was sold by the owner of the loan to a buyer of the loan.

There are two key questions:

The first (origination) fact pattern is usually the same. A borrower applies to an entity that advertises itself as a lender and that “lender” agrees to loan the money to the borrower. A closing agent contacts the borrower with information concerning the closing of the loan. The borrower goes to the closing, the money appears, and the borrower signs a myriad of documents. Here’s the question: what if the “lender” did not loan the money and either played the part of an undisclosed nominee, and unlicensed mortgage broker or licensed mortgage broker, and never had a valid legal claim to collect on the note or enforce the mortgage?

The second (assignment) fact pattern is also usually the same. In cases where there is litigation documents magically appear showing the assignment or endorsement of the loan using a claim of authority or the production of an apparent power of attorney. The assignment or endorsement frequently occurs more than once. There are actually two questions here: (A) assuming the facts in paragraph 1 above are true what difference does it make if there were one or 100 assignments? If there is no valid or perfected lien and the assignor never had a claim to collect on the “loan,” the assignment may give the appearance of propriety but it conveys nothing; (B) If the assignee never paid for the sale of the note how could the assignment transaction be considered complete? The Uniform Commercial Code governing the creation and sale of negotiable instruments indicates that each transaction must be for value received or consideration. Is the so-called assignment merely an offer lacking acceptance and payment?

You can have 100 or 1000 pages of documentation, but without a completed underlying transaction nothing in the documentation will have any legal effect on anyone despite the apparent “weight of the evidence.”

The point is actually very simple. Don’t get lost in the weeds of the documentation. The first question to be asked at the threshold is whether or not a transaction actually occurred containing the legal elements required for a completed transaction. If there is no consideration there is no transaction. If there is no transaction then there are no rights to enforce by or against anyone.

The arguments about the holder of the note are frankly silly. In the absence of consideration the party holding the note is merely possessing the note without any rights of collection or enforcement. If it were otherwise then any Courier, attorney or closing agent would be able to collect on the note and even foreclose on the mortgage leaving the lender out in the cold.

Whether or not a party is a holder or holder in due course is a question of law which raises presumptions if the proper foundation is established in order to conclude that a party is a holder or holder in due course. These are all legal conclusions and not factual issues. In order to establish the legal conclusion of holder or holder in due course the proponent of that legal conclusion must have a prima facie case showing a legal transaction in which ownership of the loan was transferred. Imagine if it were otherwise: accepting the circular logic of the banks, if six people were sitting around a table with a note in the middle the one with the fastest hands would be able to collect on a note and foreclose the mortgage. This is not the law.

As a tactical note, the practitioner should be relentless in the pursuit of the actual proof of payment (at origination or purported sale of the loan) without which there can be no proof of loss. If there is no proof of loss than there is no creditor. If there is no creditor there can be no credit bid at the time of auction of the property. And since that has occurred on a regular basis in all 50 states it would be fair to say that the sale of the property in foreclosure was never completed and that the homeowners still owns the home — or is entitled to compensatory damages equal to the value of the home because of breach of contract, slander of title, fraud etc. I believe that the claim that is easier to pursue is the one for compensatory and punitive damages plus attorneys fees and costs of the action.

In discovery what you are looking for is the actual wire transfer receipt, wire transfer instructions, ACH confirmation, cancelled check or Check 21 confirmation, showing the name of the party who paid and the name of the party who received the payment. Whether you are in small claims court or federal court the requirement is always the same. Any party seeking affirmative relief from the court must show that they were injured or damaged by the party whom they have sued. If they can’t show the payment and an unbroken chain of payments leading up and including the supposed assignment, then they have no claim because the court lacks jurisdiction and the party lacks standing to enforce or even consider a claim in which there is no injury.

So the answer to the question posed in the title of this article is no, the loan was never sold. We know that because the investors deposited money with the investment bank and it was the investors’ money that funded the loan. Contrary to popular misconception the money from the investors was never used to fund any pool of assets or trust. It was used directly to fund loans and the various fees to undisclosed third parties contrary to the requirements of the truth in lending act. The investment by the investors into each loan was the only time money changed hands which in turn means it was the only time that consideration existed.

That is why you will never find payment from one party to another in the alleged securitization chain. the truth is that there is no securitization chain and the banks intentionally failed to document the interest of the investors in each mortgage because the banks wanted to assert their own claim to ownership of the loan and the bogus securities allegedly backed by the loan. If they had been honest, then they would have taken the investor money, put it into an account that was owned by the asset pool, fund the loan from the asset pool and then document the transaction showing the interest of the asset pool at the time of origination of the loan or at the time that the loan was in fact sold to the asset pool for payment received.

And THAT is why I say that the existence of MERS is proof of fraudulent intent. There would have been no need for MERS or anything like it (See Chase Bank and Wells Fargo) if the Banks were not going to trade securities based upon THEIR ownership of a loan they never made.

If you prove these points in court I believe you will win the case.

SB 1666: Fast Foreclosure Bill Resurrected in Senate After Thought Dead
http://4closurefraud.org/2013/05/01/sb-1666-fast-foreclosure-bill-resurrected-in-senate-after-thought-dead/

WOULD THEY STILL BE TIGHT LIPPED IF THE NEWS WAS GOOD FOR THE BANKS? Regulators to Keep Tight Lips on Foreclosure Improprieties
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/regulators_keep_tight_lips_over_foreclosure_improprieties_20130430/

Foreclosure Scams Rampant in Florida
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/foreclosure-scams-rampant-in-florida-21904/

UBS faces calls for break-up at investor meeting
http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2013/05/02/ubs-faces-calls-for-break-up-at-investor-meeting/

Macro Factors and Their Impact on Monetary Policy, The Economy and Financial Markets
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/05/macro-factors-and-their-impact-on-monetary-policy-the-economy-and-financial-markets/

Roubini: Fed Risking Sequel to 2008 Financial Crisis
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100698405

Filed under: CDO, CORRUPTION, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: assignment, consideration, credit bid, money changing hands, money damages, origination, proof of loss, proof of payment, sale of loan | 177 Comments »

Illinois Takes A Step in the Right Direction

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Neil Garfield

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

The selection of an attorney is an important decision and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s Comment: Illinois has taken a step forward but they are still plagued by the wrong assumption — that the courts are dealing with a legitimate debt. There is no debt if it is paid and in many cases the original debt has been paid down or paid off by third party mitigation payments from insurance and credit default swaps.

Remember the note raises the presumption of the existence of the debt which is rebuttable. It does not prove the loss. Without proof of loss there is no foreclosure or any other lawsuit for that matter. The party seeking relief must show they have been or will be injured in some way to get money damages, equitable relief (like foreclosure) or anything else. Without injury they don’t belong in court, which is why we have a jurisdictional rule regarding standing. No injury=no standing.

So the bad point about the new rules is that the forecloser must prove the debt, but it doesn’t specifically say they must plead or prove the loss. The problem with that is production of the note (whether the the real note or something that looks like the real note) raises the presumption of the debt. It also causes Judges to assume that the loss is self-evident — i.e., if someone has the note it is presumed that they paid for it and will suffer a loss of their expectancy of payment under the terms of the note.

If you don’t demand to see the canceled check or the wire transfer receipt and wire transfer instructions or other forms of actual payment of money (where it can be seen that money actually exchanged hands) then there is no consideration, the paper is not negotiable, the UCC doesn’t apply and the party seeking to foreclose has no standing because they have not been injured by the borrower, even if the borrower didn’t make any payments. At the root of this mess is a scheme of illusions created by the banks. Demand reality and you will get traction.

But there are also some good points about the new rules. The one requiring counseling for the homeowners would be good if the counselors knew what they were talking about and understood the perfectly valid defenses available to homeowners who got swindled into signing papers in favor of a company that never made a loan to them. From what I have seen, the counselors don’t have any idea about such things and it is merely a debt counseling session about getting your life in order, which is a good thing, but not what you can do about having your life turned upside down by an illegal foreclosure.

The part I like is the burden placed on foreclosers that would show that a modification is not possible. This is simple: if the results of foreclosure are that the net proceeds are substantially less than what the homeowner is offering, then the loan can be modified. Demand should be made for the methodology and the person who calculated the modification for the forecloser and their authority to do so. And demand should be made for what contact they had with the “creditor.” Then you contact the creditor and find out (a) if they are the creditor (b) whether they were contacted and (c) how they feel about getting $150,000 from the homeowner rather than $50,000 from foreclosure.

As for the modification part, the banks are going to fake it just like they fake everything else. Be ready with an expert declaration that shows that the modification offered is far better than foreclosure, and that this is evidence of the fact that the servicer never even “Considered” the modification, which is violation of HAMP and HARP.

Filed under: CDO, Eviction, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: consideration, creditor, debt, DEBTOR, injury, legitimate debt, modification, Mortgage, note, proof of loss, proof of payment, standing, UCC, wire transfer instructions, wire transfer receipt | 84 Comments »

Follow the Money Trail: It’s the blueprint for your case

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Neil Garfield

If you are seeking legal representation or other services call our Florida customer service number at 954-495-9867 and for the West coast the number remains 520-405-1688. Customer service for the livinglies store with workbooks, services and analysis remains the same at 520-405-1688. The people who answer the phone are NOT attorneys and NOT permitted to provide any legal advice, but they can guide you toward some of our products and services.

The selection of an attorney is an important decision and should only be made after you have interviewed licensed attorneys familiar with investment banking, securities, property law, consumer law, mortgages, foreclosures, and collection procedures. This site is dedicated to providing those services directly or indirectly through attorneys seeking guidance or assistance in representing consumers and homeowners. We are available to any lawyer seeking assistance anywhere in the country, U.S. possessions and territories. Neil Garfield is a licensed member of the Florida Bar and is qualified to appear as an expert witness or litigator in in several states including the district of Columbia. The information on this blog is general information and should NEVER be considered to be advice on one specific case. Consultation with a licensed attorney is required in this highly complex field.

Editor’s Analysis and Comment: If you want to know where all the money went during the mortgage madness of the last decade and the probable duplication of that behavior with all forms of consumer debt, the first clues have been emerging. First and foremost I would suggest the so-called bull market reflecting an economic resurgence that appears to have no basis in reality. Putting hundred of billions of dollars into the stock market is an obvious place to store ill-gotten gains.

But there is also the question of liquidity which means the Wall Street bankers had to “park” their money somewhere into depository accounts. Some analysts have suggested that the bankers deposited money in places where the sheer volume of money deposited would give bankers strategic control over finance in those countries.

The consequences to American finance is fairly well known here. But most Americans have been somewhat aloof to the extreme problems suffered by Spain, Greece, Italy and Cyprus. Italy and Cyprus have turned to confiscating savings on a progressive basis. This could be a “fee” imposed by those countries for giving aid and comfort to the pirates of Wall Street.

So far the only country to stick with the rule of law is Iceland where some of the worst problems emerged early — before bankers could solidify political support in that country, like they have done around the world. Iceland didn’t bailout bankers, they jailed them. Iceland didn’t adopt austerity to make the problems worse, it used all its resources to stimulate the economy.

And Iceland looked at the reality of a the need for a thriving middle class. So they reduced household debt and forced banks to take the hit — some 25% or more being sliced off of mortgages and other consumer debt. Iceland was not acting out of ideology, but rather practicality.

The result is that Iceland is the shining light on the hill that we thought was ours. Iceland has real growth in gross domestic product, decreasing unemployment to acceptable levels, and banks that despite the hit they took, are also prospering.

From my perspective, I look at the situation from the perspective of a former investment banker who was in on conversations decades ago where Wall Street titans played the idea of cornering the market on money. They succeeded. But Iceland has shown that the controls emanating from Wall Street in directing legislation, executive action and judicial decisions can be broken.

It is my opinion that part or all of trillions dollars in off balance sheet transactions that were allowed over the last 15 years represents money that was literally stolen from investors who bought what they thought were bonds issued by a legitimate entity that owned loans to consumers some of which secured in the form of residential mortgage loans.

Actual evidence from the ground shows that the money from investors was skimmed by Wall Street to the tune of around $2.6 trillion, which served as the baseline for a PONZI scheme in which Wall Street bankers claimed ownership of debt in which they were neither creditor nor lender in any sense of the word. While it is difficult to actually pin down the amount stolen from the fake securitization chain (in addition to the tier 2 yield spread premium) that brought down investors and borrowers alike, it is obvious that many of these banks also used invested money from managed funds as gambling money that paid off handsomely as they received 100 cents on the dollar on losses suffered by others.

The difference between the scheme used by Wall Street this time is that bankers not only used “other people’s money” —this time they had the hubris to steal or “borrow” the losses they caused — long enough to get the benefit of federal bailout, insurance and hedge products like credit default swaps. Only after the bankers received bailouts and insurance did they push the losses onto investors who were forced to accept non-performing loans long after the 90 day window allowed under the REMIC statutes.

And that is why attorneys defending Foreclosures and other claims for consumer debt, including student loan debt, must first focus on the actual footprints in the sand. The footprints are the actual monetary transactions where real money flowed from one party to another. Leading with the money trail in your allegations, discovery and proof keeps the focus on simple reality. By identifying the real transactions, parties, timing and subject moment lawyers can use the emerging story as the blueprint to measure against the fabricated origination and transfer documents that refer to non-existent transactions.

The problem I hear all too often from clients of practitioners is that the lawyer accepts the production of the note as absolute proof of the debt. Not so. (see below). If you will remember your first year in law school an enforceable contract must have offer, acceptance and consideration and it must not violate public policy. So a contract to kill someone is not enforceable.

Debt arises only if some transaction in which real money or value is exchanged. Without that, no amount of paperwork can make it real. The note is not the debt ( it is evidence of the debt which can be rebutted). The mortgage is not the note (it is a contract to enforce the note, if the note is valid). And the TILA disclosures required make sure that consumers know who they are dealing with. In fact TILA says that any pattern of conduct in which the real lender is hidden is “predatory per se”) and it has a name — table funded loan. This leads to treble damages, attorneys fees and costs recoverable by the borrower and counsel for the borrower.

And a contract to “repay” money is not enforceable if the money was never loaned. That is where “consideration” comes in. And a an alleged contract in the lender agreed to one set of terms (the mortgage bond) and the borrower agreed to another set of terms (the promissory note) is no contract at all because there was no offer an acceptance of the same terms.

And a contract or policy that is sure to fail and result in the borrower losing his life savings and all the money put in as payments, furniture is legally unconscionable and therefore against public policy. Thus most of the consumer debt over the last 20 years has fallen into these categories of unenforceable debt.

The problem has been the inability of consumers and their lawyers to present a clear picture of what happened. That picture starts with footprints in the sand — the actual events in which money actually exchanged hands, the answer to the identity of the parties to each of those transactions and the reason they did it, which would be the terms agreed on by both parties.

If you ask me for a $100 loan and I say sure just sign this note, what happens if I don’t give you the loan? And suppose you went somewhere else to get your loan since I reneged on the deal. Could I sue you on the note? Yes. Could I win the suit? Not if you denied you ever got the money from me. Can I use the real loan as evidence that you did get the money? Yes. Can I win the case relying on the loan from another party? No because the fact that you received a loan from someone else does not support the claim on the note, for which there was no consideration.

It is the latter point that the Courts are starting to grapple with. The assumption that the underlying transaction described in the note and mortgage was real, is rightfully coming under attack. The real transactions, unsupported by note or mortgage or disclosures required under the Truth in Lending Act, cannot be the square peg jammed into the round hole. The transaction described in the note, mortgage, transfers, and disclosures was never supported by any transaction in which money exchanged hands. And it was not properly disclosed or documented so that there could be a meeting of the minds for a binding contract.

KEEP THIS IN MIND: (DISCOVERY HINTS) The simple blueprint against which you cast your fact pattern, is that if the securitization scheme was real and not a PONZI scheme, the investors’ money would have gone into a trust account for the REMIC trust. The REMIC trust would have a record of the transaction wherein a deduction of money from that account funded your loan. And the payee on the note (and the secured party on the mortgage) would be the REMIC trust. There is no reason to have it any other way unless you are a thief trying to skim or steal money. If Wall Street had played it straight underwriting standards would have been maintained and when the day came that investors didn’t want to buy any more mortgage bonds, the financial world would not have been on the verge of extinction. Much of the losses to investors would have covered by the insurance and credit default swaps that the banks took even though they never had any loss or risk of loss. There never would have been any reason to use nominees like MERS or originators.

The entire scheme boils down to this: can you borrow the realities of a transaction in which you were not a party and treat it, legally in court, as your own? So far the courts have missed this question and the result has been an unequivocal and misguided “yes.” Relentless of pursuit of the truth and insistence on following the rule of law, will produce a very different result. And maybe America will use the shining example of Iceland as a model rather than letting bankers control our governmental processes.

Banking Chief Calls For 15% Looting of Italians’ Savings
http://www.infowars.com/banking-chief-calls-for-15-looting-of-italians-savings/

Filed under: alternative medicine, AMERICAN HOMEOWNERS COOPERATIVE, AMGAR, ATM, bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GARFIELD GWALTNEY KELLEY AND WHITE, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: acceptance, consideration, contract law, credit default swaps, CYRPUS, debt, euro, ICELAND, insurance, Italy, MERS, Mortgage, mortgage bonds, naked nominee, nominees, note, offer, Ponzi scheme, preadtory loans, public policy, real property law, REMIC TRUST, SPAIN, table funded loans, TILA, Truth in Lending Act | 146 Comments »

Vacate the Substitution of Trustee

Posted on September 17, 2012 by Neil Garfield

“The Bottom Line is that if the REMIC transactions were real, they would have been named on the note and mortgage. The fact that they never were named or disclosed demonstrates clearly that something else was going on besides funding mortgages with REMIC money from investors. Nobody would loan money without putting their name as payee on the note, their name as lender on the note and mortgage and their name as beneficiary. The Wall Street explanation that MERS and other obscurities were necessary to securitize the loans is in fact directly contrary to the fact that the loans were never securitized, that the mortgage bonds were bogus obligations from empty REMICs with no bank account and no active manager or trustee.” Neil F Garfield, livinglies.me

A recent case I reviewed, resulted in a full analysis, and my suggestions for strategy, tactics, pleading and oral argument. It involved Bank of America, Recontrust and BONY/Mellon.

What is again so interesting is that we are dealing with BOA in SImi Valley, CA (supposedly) with Reconstrust in in in Richardson, TX. What is interesting is that the response to my letter which was addressed only to Recontrust came from BOA. This is evidence of the fact that Recontrust are one and the same entity. It doesn’t prove it but it is evidence of it. Thus the challenge to the substitution of trustee comes under the heading that a beneficiary cannot name itself as the trustee. The statute says the TRUSTOR names the trustee on the deed of trust not the beneficiary. And while the beneficiary may change the trustee there is nothing in the statute that even suggests that a beneficiary could name itself as the new trustee. The statute says that the trustee is to substitute for a court of law and that it is to exercise (See Hogan decision and others) a fiduciary duty toward both the Trustor and the beneficiary.

In most cases, the appearance of Bank of America as a beneficiary is via “merger with BAC” which was created to take the servicing rights from Countrywide (not the ownership of the loan). Yet the debt validation letter causes a response to show that the creditor is Bank of America while the Notice of Default shows as having a REMIC as the creditor, which would make the REMIC the beneficiary. So we have a conflict of creditors that comes from the same source.

Since the REMIC is required by law and contract to be closed out within 90 days with the loans in it, and since we know they didn’t do that, the money from the investors was beyond any reasonable doubt channeled through conduits controlled by the investment banker and not the account of the REMIC because there was no trust account, bank account or any account through which the investor money was channeled and then sued to fund or buy loans. This leads to the inevitable conclusion that the entire scheme is a smoke screen for what really occurred.

Based upon what we know, the REMIC structure was actually ignored when it came to the movement of money. Based upon what we know, Quicken Loans and others acted as “originators”, which is a word that is not really defined legally but it would imply that it was the sales entity to reel in borrowers for a deal. While Quicken Loans was shown as payee on the note and lender on the note and mortgage (deed of trust), Quicken had neither loaned any money nor secured the loan through any legal nexus between Quicken and the investors. MERS was inserted as a placeholder for title purposes. Quicken was thus inserted as a placeholder for payment purposes — all without ad equate disclosure of the compensation received by MERS or QUICKEN in the deal (a clear violation of TILA and RESPA).

Immediately after the closing of the loan the borrower was informed that the servicing rights had been transferred to Countrywide, and thereafter BAC emerged as the servicer. BAC was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary of bank of America and then merged with Bank of America for unknown reasons, and thus the servicing of the loan was assumed to be the right of Bank of America. But what was there to service?

If Quicken did not advance the funds for the loan nor did Quicken or any of its “successors” advance money for the purchase of a perfectly performing loan, then who did? The answer comes from irrefutable logic. We know the REMIC was ignored so the money didn’t come from the REMIC. If there was an intermediary who was acting as agent for the REMIC it had to be the Trustee for the REMIC who has no trust account or bank account to show for it. Thus the money came from another source and the money taken from investors may or may not have been used to fund the borrower’s loan in this case or more likely, a larger pool of investor funds was used as the source of funding but was NOT documented with the usual promissory note and mortgage (deed of trust) signed by the borrower.

The legal conclusion I reach is that the mountain of paperwork starting with the “origination” of the loan is worthless paper unsupported by either consideration (funding the loan) and whose recitations of facts are at variance with (1) the actual trail of money and (2) the provisions of the documents upon which Bank of America now relies requiring assignment of the loan in recordable form into the REMIC within 90 days while it was still performing. But they couldn’t assign it into the trust because (1) the trust had no money or account with which to pay for the loan and (2) this would have prevented the investment bank from trading the loan and the loan portfolios as if it were the property of the investment bank.

Thus Bank of America is attempting to appear as the new beneficiary based upon a complete lack of any chain of transactions that would make it so. And they are using the cover of BONY as “trustee” as cover for their false and fraudulent representations knowing full well that neither BONY nor the REMIC ever received a dime from investors, borrowers or anyone else and that instead the flow of money was entirely outside the sham paper transactions upon which BOA now relies.

Having covered up an incomplete unexecuted contract without funding the loan, the securitization participants proceeded to act as though the loan transaction with Quicken was real. If they relied upon the original trustee, the original trustee would have required sufficient title and other information from BOA before taking any action against the Trustor borrower.

Thus Bank of America names Reconstrust as the substitute trustee, that will “play ball” with them because Recontrust is owned and controlled by Bank of America. The challenge, as we have said, should be to the substitution of trustee as not having named an objective third party and instead being the equivalent of the beneficiary naming itself as trustee. BY definition, the new trustee is neither likely nor able to exercise due diligence and act in a responsible manner with a fiduciary duty to the trustor and beneficiary, if they can determine the identity of the beneficiary.

Thus any TRO or other action should be directed against the substitution of trustee as being outside the intent of the statute and violative of due process since it provides the beneficiary with unfettered ability to sell property merely on a whim. In order to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of constitutional dude process the legislature had to show that there was a different procedure in place that would allow for the claims of all stakeholders to be heard. Even if the substitution of trustee was valid, the mere denial of the claims of the beneficiary and accusations of fraud, false assignments, and a closing at which the mortgage lien was not perfected, on a note that did not name the proper payee nor state the same terms of repayment that the investors received when they “bought” the bogus mortgage bonds.

Bottom Line: The Pile of paperwork is worthless and does not create nor provide evidence of an actual transaction that took place wherein the named payee and lender ever fulfilled its part of the bargain — lending money to the borrower. Nor does it present even the possibility of a perfected mortgage lien. Thus foreclosure is impossible. The trustee was and is under an obligation in contested cases to file an interpleader action where the stakeholders’ claims may be heard on the merits. The primary trustee on the deed of trust may have violated its fiduciary duties by allowing the practice that it, of all entities, would or should have known was both illegal and improper. For both procedural and substantive reasons, the notice of default and notice of sale should be vacated and purged from the county records.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: Bank of America, Bony/Mellon, consideration, countrywide, due process, funding, Quicken, RECONSTRUST, REMIC, subsitution of trustee, Substitution of Trustee, trustee | 22 Comments »

No Loan Receivable Account Exists

Posted on August 23, 2012 by Neil Garfield

Everyone seems to be having trouble with winning these cases outright. I think I have discovered the problem.

Most attorneys start in the middle of things because that is how it comes to them. Basic Contracts Law, first day of law school. For an agreement to be enforceable it must have all three of the these components: offer, acceptance and consideration. You can’t have just an offer, you can’t have just an acceptance, there must be some act that the law recognizes as consideration if the offer is accepted. Absent all three there is no way for a party to enforce an agreement for which there was either no acceptance nor any consideration.

If I loan you $100, you owe me $100 whether you sign a piece of paper or not. I offered to make the loan, you agreed to accept it and pay it back. That is true and presumed to be the reasonable interpretation of any exchange of money or property — that it isn’t a gift. And ALL of that is true whether there is documentation or not.

It is equally true that if I induce you to sign the note under the promise that I will loan you the $100, we have offer and acceptance and evidence of both the offer and the acceptance. But if I don’t give you the $100, there is no consideration and the agreement is not enforceable regardless of whether it is in writing or not. In the real world, I might survive a motion to dismiss or even a motion for summary judgment, but I could never win at trial because I don’t have any evidence that the money was delivered to you in cash, check or wire transfer.

But you are still going to lose and have a judgment entered against you for the $100 if you don’t deny that you ever got the money and you probably should add for good measure that you were fraudulently induced to sign a note when I knew I wasn’t going to give you the money.

The deal signed by most borrowers lacked consideration because the money did NOT come from the party representing itself to be the lender. The offer to the borrower was not the deal that the investor-lender or even the nonexistent trust pool was promised so if could not have been offered that way — with all the securitization parties involved and all their compensation contrary to the requirements of TILA for disclosure, whose purpose is to give the borrower an opportunity to exercise choice and seek a better competing deal in the marketplace. The borrower accepted an offer that was not backed by consideration nor the intent to provide it.

Hence there was no meeting of the minds in the first instance.

If you reverse the analysis and say that it was the borrower who made the offer it gets even worse. 99% of the real applications if they contained the true facts would never have been accepted by any investor or even a bank looking for subprime profits.

Hence the basics of contracts law have not been met – — you might have the argument to say there was an offer, but there are not grounds to say there was or even would have been acceptance if the true facts were known, and the documents signed do not reflect either the offer or the acceptance by the actual investor-lender or even the pool, whose documents were routinely ignored.

The real problem of Wall Street lies in the facts not in theory. They took the money in with complete disregard to the wishes and intent and agreement of the investor lenders and then funded loans from their own accounts that were based upon false premises made both to the investor-lenders and the borrowers. It is the fact that the money came from a Wall Street account rather than an investor account that causes the confusion.

That funding was the consideration — but that was separate from the documentary chain used by the securitizers. You can’t point to consideration “over there” and say that was the consideration you gave in exchange for the note and mortgage unless you can show that “over there” was connected to the documents that were presented to the borrower and signed under false pretenses, creating fraud in the inducement and even fraud in the execution of those documents.

They were “borrowing” the consideration from “over there” and borrowing the identity of the investor-lenders and borrowers to create a monumental shrine to Ponzi schemes in which the total nominal value of the scheme exceed world fiat money by 12 times the actual supply of money. The ONLY was to combat this is to dismantle the fraudulent scheme so that the threat posed by “shadow banking” no longer exists, seizure of the assets illegally obtained, and making whatever restitution is possible to investor-lenders and homeowners, past, present and future.

They did the illegal deals and then had their own people “approve”them and even accept them into non-existing pools without bank accounts. They claimed the loans as their own when it was convenient for them to do so — getting the money for plunging values of the mortgage bonds at 100 cents on the dollar.

Then they dumped what was left of the paperwork over the fence and told the investor NOW the loan is yours and you have a loss. But at all times these banks were merely depository institutions and they were accepting deposits from investor-lenders more or less in the same form as a CD. Their balance sheet did not show a loan receivable. It would have shown a liability for the deposit that was due back to the investor-lender but for them inserting fictitious entities that would take the liability and the loss borrower. In other words a shell game supporting the usual Ponzi scheme scenario.

In a word, they merely substituted the mortgage bond owed by a non-existent entity with no assets for a normal loan receivable account. Thus no loan receivable accounts exists.

Filed under: bubble, CDO, CORRUPTION, currency, Eviction, foreclosure, GTC | Honor, Investor, Mortgage, securities fraud | Tagged: acceptance, accounting, consideration, contracts law, loan receivable, mortgage bonds, offer, Ponzi, shadow banking, shell game | 133 Comments »

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current trial court decisions are getting reversed because the courts are waking up to the reality of the rule of law. What they have been following is an off the books rule of “anything but a free house.”

the Courts may think they are saving the financial system, the economy and our society from disintegration, but in truth they are undermining all three.

A recent Yale Law Review article eviscerates the assumptions of a “free house” for the homeowners and destroys the myth that somehow that policy has saved the nation. Yale-In Defense of Free Houses 2016 03 23

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Books and Manuals authored by Neil Garfield are also available, plus video seminars on DVD.

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THIS ARTICLE IS NOT A LEGAL OPINION UPON WHICH YOU CAN RELY IN ANY INDIVIDUAL CASE. HIRE A LAWYER.
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