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How to Distinguish Between Ownership of the Debt, Ownership of the Note and Ownership of the Mortgage (or Deed of Trust)

Aug 16, 2019

Amongst the lay people who are researching issues regarding who actually can enforce a mortgage, there is confusion arising from specific terms of art used by lawyers in distinguishing between a debt, a note and a mortgage. This article is intended to clarify the subject for lawyers and pro litigants. The devil is in the details.

Bottom Line: In most cases foreclosures are allowed because of the presumption that the actual original note has been physically delivered to the current claimant from one who owned the debt because they both had paid money for it. In most cases merely denying that fact is insufficient to prevent the foreclosure because the court is erroneously presuming that even if the foreclosure is deficient the proceeds of sale will still go to pay the debt.

In most cases those presumptions are untrue but must be rebutted. And the way to rebut those presumptions is to formulate discovery that asks who paid for the debt, when and who were the parties to the transaction?

The  lawyers from the foreclosure mills will fight tooth and nail to prevent an order from the court directing them to answer the simple question of who actually owns the debt by reason of having paid value for it and thus who will receive the foreclosure sale proceeds as payment for the debt. The answer is almost always the same — the foreclosure mill is unable to identify such a party thus conceding the lack of subject matter jurisdiction and standing to bring the foreclosure action.

Eventually some party will be identified by changes in the law as being the legal owner of the debt. thus cleaning up the jurisdictional issue caused by utilizing parties who have neither suffered any financial injury nor are threatened with any such financial injury. But for now, the banks are stuck with the mess they created.

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Transfer of debt is by payment for the debt. Payment means you have a legal and equitable right to claim the debt as your own. Payor is the new owner of the debt and the Payee is the prior owner of the debt. There are no exceptions.

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The note is evidence of the debt. It is not the debt.
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Payment of money to a borrower creates a debt or liability regardless of whether or not any document is signed.
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Signing a document promising to pay creates a liability regardless of whether or not there was ny payment of money. In fact, if someone buys the note for value they become a holder in due course and the maker is liable even if they never received any money, value or consideration.
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Enforcement of the debt alone is governed by statutory and common law.
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Enforcement of notes and enforcement of the security instrument (mortgage or deed of trust) is controlled strictly by the adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).
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Article 3 UCC governs the negotiation and enforcement of paper instruments containing an unconditional promise to pay a certain sum on a certain date.
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Article 9 governs the transfer and enforcement of security agreements (mortgages and deeds of trust).
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Whereas Article 3 does not require the holder of the note to be the owner of the debt for purposes of enforcement of the note, Article 9 requires the holder of the mortgage to be the owner of the debt as a condition precedent to enforcement of the mortgage. No exceptions.
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Ordinarily the execution of the note causes the debt to be merged with the obligations under the terms of the note. But this is only true if the owner of the debt and payee under the note are the same party. If not, then the execution of the note creates two distinct liabilities — one for payment of the debt and one for payment under the terms of the “contract” (i.e., the note).
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Before securitization it was customary that the owner of the debt had paid money to the borrower as a loan, and the execution of the note formalized the scheme for repayment. Hence under the merger doctrine the borrower who accepted the loan and the maker of the note were the same party and the Lender of the money to the borrower was also the payee named in the note.
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Now this is not always the case and appears to be not the case in most loans, which is why the banks have resorted to fabricated backdated forged and robosigned documents. The Lender in many if not most loan originations was not the party named as payee on the note. And the party named as payee on the note had no authority to represent the interests of the lender. Where this is true, merger cannot apply. And where this is true, enforcement of the note is NOT enforcement of the debt. Rather it is enforcement of a liability created entirely by contract.
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Foreclosure of a mortgage must be for payment of the debt, not just the liability on the note. All states have case law that says that transfer of mortgage without the debt are a nullity. This executing and receiving an assignment of mortgage and even recording it is a legal nullity unless the recipient paid money for the debt and the transferor was conveying ownership of the debt because the transferor had paid money for the debt. If those conditions are not met the executed and recorded assignment of mortgage is a legal nullity and the title record must be viewed by the court as lacking an assignment of mortgage.
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The judiciary has not caught up with these discrepancies in most instances. Hence a judge will ordinarily presume that the delivery and endorsement of the note and the assignment of the mortgage was equivalent to the transfer of title to the debt, with payment being presumed for the debt. So while the law requires ownership of the debt by reason having paid for it, the courts presume that the debt was transferred along with the paper, subject to rebuttal by the maker and borrower.
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The rubber meets the road when in discovery and defenses the borrower raises the issue of who paid for the debt and when. In the current world of securitization the answer will be the same: the banks won’t tell you and they won’t admit that the party named as claimant in the foreclosure never paid for the debt, despite appearances to the contrary. 

Posted in discovery, evidence, Fabrication of documents, foreclosure defenses, foreclosure mill, legal standing, Pleading |

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