DEBT vs. Note: What is the difference?

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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.

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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.

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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.

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