Almost makes you wish you had a mortgage.
That is a well written article. I wish our newspapers would explore the issues as well as your local newspaper did.
I am no expert in this matter, but my experience in Quiet Title Actions here in Maine would tend to indicate that our courts would not agree with the Utah courts. There would be numerous reasons the court would disagree.
Firstly, everyone knows in the referenced cases that there is a mortgage. The issue is the recording process. I believe that in Maine Title Standards there is the concept of "Due Diligence". If something is not recorded properly it is the duty of the attorney to take extraordinary steps to sort it out when in fact he knows that it is out there. I find it hard to believe that these cases will survive the appeal process in the State and certainly the Federal Courts.
Do a search for April Charney and the MERS mess, and subscribe to the DIRT blog for the two sides to this problem.
If your home is subject to mortgage, you can file a 'Homestead Declaration' in the register of deeds office that will force lenders or their reps to arrange a modification of the mortgage rather than a foreclosure.
This forclosure debacle and the push to make laws against adverse possession are all backed by the lenders/title agencies; maybe Christ had a good reason to throw the money changeres/lenders out of the temple.
People in possession of the land have special rights here in the US and our legal system, (when it is working, which isn't too often), provides protection for the citizen but those protections only work if you and your attorney know they exist.
When surveyors fail to understand these rights as they apply to record descriptions and boundaries we are complicit in the failure of the system.
Ignorance of the lawe is no excuse.
Richard Schaut
Thanks for posting the link.
Don't miss reading the comments. The analysis in some are every bit as interesting as the main article.
Surveyors have been having a terrible time with MERS. To do a subdivision you need to get all the estate interests (or at least as many as the county has thought of so far; and I'm not bringing up mineral estates) to sign off. Because of MERS finding out who is the mortgage holder is almost impossible sometimes. They aren't filing a record in the courthouse so do they really have an estate interest?
It's a real mess. All they need to do is file a mortgage deed each time the mortgage is sold-but that must be too much trouble. So they invented this mess. I have little sympathy for them. Although I hate to see people skip on their mortgage, maybe this kind of law suit will bring some sanity to the mortgage industry.
I have a foreclosure deed from 2001...
That is so bad, its laughable, if it wasn't so serious...this was in 2001!!
I have it in .pdf...but I can't figure out how to post it...
