A great new article, with accompanying video, from Amvona:
In January the Massachusetts supreme judicial court held in US Bank National Association vs. Antonio Ibanez that a note holder may not foreclose on a property in order to redeem a debt, if they are not also the holder of a valid mortgage (that is to say also with a valid assignment). We outlined the details of this case and its implications in our article “Ibanez ““ Denying the Antecedent, Suppressing the Evidence and one big fat Red Herring” on January 11th, 2011.
The issue before the SJC in Henrietta Eaton v. Federal National Mortgage Association and Green Tree Servicing, LLC is whether the assignee of a mortgage security alone (fraudulent assignments aside), without any direct or indirect interest in or claim to the underlying debt, can seek to recover the debt through foreclosure.
Oral arguments in the case were heard on Oct. 3rd, 2011.
It is important to note that in Ibanez, the SJC was not willing to overturn long standing legal principles simply because of recent “innovation” in the way banks chose to record their security interest in real property (e.g. MERS), or because of the extraordinary liability such a ruling would have on what basically amounted to four years of mostly illegal foreclosure activity in the Commonwealth.
The Ibanez article published last January predated Eaton by some ten months, and since the SJC reviewed Eaton “sua sponte”, there was no way to know at the time, that Eaton would make it all the way to the SJC, so the following comments taken from the article are perhaps prescient:
” It is possible that from the banks perspective an invalid assignment of the note is the more serious concern for the following reasons:
1. Without first having proper ownership of the debt, the bank can not initiate any collection activity, let alone foreclosure.
2. Notes (ownership of the debt asset), may be subject to further contention in bankruptcy proceedings where many creditors have a vested interest in the assets of a defunct mortgage lender, particularly since these notes are often sold in bankruptcy for a fraction of their face value.
3. The trusts that are supposed to contain the validly conveyed notes will in fact, not actually contain them (because they are not bearer paper), thus violating the representations and warranties made to investors who purchase these securities. Therefore, it is unsecured debt, and potentially, no debt at all upon which to collect payments.
…
6. Even if the notes obtain a valid conveyance, or confirmation of conveyance at a later date, it is still may be impossible to place them into the MBS’s:
a. It will have been longer than 90 days (the typical expiry period to transfer assets into the trust)
b. If it is a foreclosure matter, the loan is in default (the PSA’s do not allow for the addition of defaulted loans)
c. Any effort on the part of the trust to insert old or defaulted loans would jeopardize the trusts favorable REMIC status ““ thus further harming already impaired returns.”
As pointed out in the Ibanez article, clear title to the property is important. If the assignment of the mortgage is invalid, then there is a “cloud on title”. The banks recognizing this, brought Ibanez before the land court of their own volition in order to clear this “cloud on title”. One of the key mistakes counsel for Eaton made, perhaps in their effort to establish the more serious problem of legitimate possession of the note, was overlooking the validity of the Mortgage assignment, (still incredibly important) which, as with most securitized loans, was so clearly fraudulent (see Amicus brief of Marie McDonnell). Incidentally, this was of particular interest to the court during oral arguments, however, because the issue was never raised by Eaton’s counsel in its complaint, it could not be addressed by the court. Thus the opportunity to cite the authority of Crowley v. Adams 22 Mass. 582 (1917) which concerned the fraudulent conveyance of a mortgage without a note, was lost. Within the context of discussing the assignees knowledge of the fraud, the court held:
