Bankruptcy Lawyers: it starts in the schedules — admission of secured debt is deadly

Bankruptcy Lawyers: it starts in the schedules — admission of secured debt is deadly by Neil Garfield

I was traveling and re listening to an older lecture given by 2 Bankruptcy judges generally held in high esteem. The largest point was that naming a party as the creditor and checking the right boxes showing they are secured basically ends the discussion on the motion to lift stay and restricts your options to either filing an adversary lawsuit attached to the administrative bankruptcy petition or filing an action in state court which is where you will be if you don't follow this same simple direction. If you file schedules attached to your petition for bankruptcy relief, as you are required to do, these are basically the same as sworn affidavits. They will be used against you in any contested hearing.

So the judge lifts the stay and then often mistakenly enters additional language in the order ending the issue of whom is the real lender. After all, that is who you were making the payments to, right, so they must be a creditor. And this is all about a mortgage foreclosure so they must, in addition to being a creditor, they must be a secured creditor. And if the collateral is worth less than the claim, there is not much else to talk about it is simple to these Judges because nobody has shown them differently and one of the Judges is retired now. By definition when the Bankruptcy Judge says in the order who is the creditor, he or she has gone beyond their jurisdiction and due process because there was no evidentiary hearing.

This all results from a combination of technology (garbage in, garbage out), inexperience with securitized mortgages, laziness and failure to do the research to determine what is the truth and what is not. If you are a bankruptcy practitioner who uses one of the desktop bankruptcy programs, then the questions, boxes, and fill-ins are intuitively placed in the schedule that your client swears to. No problem unless the schedules are wrong. And they are wrong where the debt runs from the Petitioner to the REMIC trust beneficiaries and is unsecured by any mortgage that the homeowner borrower petitioner ever signed or meant to sign.

The first point is that the amount if the debt is unknown and we now this for a fact because there are multiple offsets for Third party payment (like Servicer advances) that must be examined one by one. It could be zero, it could be there is money due to the borrower, it could be more or less what is being demanded by the Servicer or trustee. Another thing we know is that neither the Servicer or trustee is likely to know the amount of their claim. So send out a QWR to all addresses for the Servicer and the REMIC trustee.

If you get several different payment histories it is a fair bet they came off of different records, different systems and require the records custodian to authenticate each Servicer' rendition, of beginning balance, ending balance and every transaction in between. The creditor who filed a proof of claim has the burden of showing a color able right to enforce the mortgage. That can only come from the pooling and servicing agreement. The parties to the PSA are the REMIC Trust, the REMIC Trust beneficiaries and the broker dealer who sold the bonds issued by the REMIC trust.

But if there is no trust or the REMIC trust never actually acquired the subject loan, then the appointed Servicer in the PSA draws no power from a PSA for a nonexistent or empty trust (at least empty of the subject loan.) it is not the Servicer by right, it has become the Servicer by its intervention into the contractual right between the borrower homeowner and the lender (the REMIC trust beneficiaries). The "apparent authority" of the Servicer will only take it so far.

And every transactions means that as a Servicer they were paying or passing on the borrower's payments . Where are those records --- missing. Does the corporate representative know about those payments? Who was the creditor paid. When did the payments from Servicer start and when did they stop --- or are they still on-going right up to and including trial, foreclosure sale auction and final disposition of proceeds from an REO sale.

So from the perspective of the Petitioner he might have made payments to an entity that claimed to be the Servicer and those payments are due back not the bankruptcy estate. OOPS but that is what happens when a company arrogated unto itself the powers of a Servicer for loans that are claimed to be in a trust --- where the trust doesn't own the loan, note or mortgage (deed of trust). Thus the Servicer would be owed zero but you would show them in the unsecured column, unliquidated and disputed. This could have a substantial income on the amount of the claim, whether part or all of it is secured.

But no matter, if you fail to take a history from the client, get the closing documents, title and securitization report together with loan level analysis, you are going to do a disservice to your client. We provide litigation support and analysis to give you the data to make an informed decision, fight the POC, MLS, turnover of rents, etc. Then you might avoid the dreaded call of calling your insurance carrier who will probably tell you neither paid for nor received a tail on your claims made policy.

So you found my note.. Really?

What happens when you Prosper a note



There are two issues when the other side presents original documents. First is that they say these are originals and they do not accompany it with an affidavit from someone with actual personal knowledge of the transactions or the high bar for business records exceptions to hearsay. My experience is that 50-50, the documents are original or fabricated by use of Photoshop and a laser printer or dot matrix printer. So what you need to do is to go down to the clerk’s office and see what they filed. It would not be unusual for them to file a copy saying it was the original. Second, on that same point, the original can be examined. When the signatures are heavy there should be indentations on the back. Also a notary stamp tends to bleed through the paper to the back.
The second major point is the issue of holder v owner. The owner of the debt is entitled to the ultimate relief, not the note-holder unless the other side fails to object. So along with the proffering of the “originals” they must tell the story, using competent foundation testimony, how they came into possession of the note. In discovery this is done by asking to see proof of payment and proof of loss. Which is to say that you want to see the canceled check or wire transfer receipt that paid for the “transaction” in which the possessor of the note became a holder under UCC and is entitled to a rebuttable presumption that they are the owner. If there is no transaction for value, then the note was not negotiated under the terms of the UCC.
Since they possess the note there is a hairline allowance that they may sue for the collection on a note in which they have no financial sake but there is no ability to win if the borrower denies they received the money or that the possessor of the note obtained the note for purposes of litigation and is not the creditor — i.e., the party who could properly submit a credit bid at auction by a creditor as defined by Florida statutes, nor are they able to execute a satisfaction of mortgage because even upon the receipt of the money they have no loss, and under the terms of the note itself the overpayment is due back to the borrower. And just as importantly, they cannot modify the mortgage so any submission to them for modification is futile without them showing proof of payment, proof of loss and/or authority to speak for and represent the interests of an identified creditor.
An identified creditor is not merely a name but is a report of the name of the owner of the debt, the contact person and their contact information. Then you can contact the owner and ask for the balance and how it was computed. So the failure to identify the actual owner is interference with the borrower’s right to seek HAMP or HARP modifications — potentially a cause of action for intentional interference in the contractual relations of another (asserting that the note and mortgage incorporated existing law) or violation of statutory duties since the Dodd-Frank act includes all participants in the securitization scheme as servicers.
The key is the money trail because that is the actual transaction where money exchanged hands and it must be shown that the money trail leads from A to B to C etc. The documents would then be examined to see if they are in fact relating to the transaction or a particular leg of the chain.

If the documents don’t conform to the actual monetary transaction, then the documents are refuted as evidence of the debt or any right to enforce the debt. What we know is that in nearly all cases the documents at origination do NOT reflect the actual monetary transaction which means they (a) do not show the actual owner of the debt but rather a straw-man nominee for an undisclosed lender contrary to several provisions of the Truth in Lending Act. The same holds true for the false securitization” chain in which documents are fabricated to refer to transactions that never occurred — where there was a transfer of the debt on paper that was worthless because no transaction took place. One last thing on this is the issue of blank endorsements. There is widespread confusion between the requirements of the UCC and the requirements of the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. It is absolutely true that a blank endorsement on a negotiable instrument is valid and that the holder possesses all rights of a holder including the presumption (rebuttable) of ownership.

But hundreds of Judges have erred in stopping their inquiry there. Because the UCC says that the agreement of the parties is paramount to any provision of the act. So if the PSA says the endorsement and assignment must be in a particular form (recordable) made out to the trust and that no blank endorsements will be accepted, then the indorsement is an offer which cannot be accepted by the asset pool or the trustee for the asset pool because it would violate an express prohibition in the PSA. And that leads to the last point which is that a document calling itself an assignment is not irrefutable evidence of an actual transfer of the loan. If the assignee does not agree to take it, then the transaction is void.  None of the assignments I have seen have any joinder and acceptance by the trustee or anyone on behalf of the pool because nobody on the trustee level is willing to risk jail, even though Eric Holder now says he won’t prosecute those crimes. If you take the deposition of the trustee and ask for information concerning the trust account, they will get all squirrelly because there is no trust account on which the trustee is a signatory. If you ask them whether they accepted the assignment of a defaulted loan and if so, what was the basis for them doing so they will get even more nervous. And if you ask them specifically if they accepted the assignment which you attach to the interrogatory or which you show them at deposition, they will have to say that they did not execute any document accepting that assignment, and then they will be required to agree, when you point out the PSA provisions that no such assignment or endorsement would be valid