Thursday, December 16, 2010

Habius Corpus or... Dude, Where's My Mortgage?


Alternet does it again. Dude, Where's my Mortgage shows how greed and tech combined to create a disaster in the making vis a vis ownership and property rights.

"There is an unbelievable scandal in the making that threatens to subvert our four-century-old method for guaranteeing a fundamental building block of the American republic—property ownership. The biggest reason why you probably haven’t heard much about it is that it involves one of the most generic and boring company names imaginable: Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc., or MERS. It is a story of deception engineered at the highest level of power for short-term gain, and another epic failure of the private sector to uphold the laws and traditions of American society, even something as fundamental as property rights."

This issue of mortgage verification also applies to CC debt as the debt collection business is booming due to the impact the depression is having on the public's ability to keep up with CC payments. When viewed in this light, it's astonishing people don't understand the fact that if the CC company cannot produce the signed contract to the debtor, the CC company cannot force the debtor to pay, a concept never explained to them (obviously), especially when the CC company sells the account to a  3rd party debt collector (often at pennies on the dollar ) while writing off the debt the CC company knows will never be repaid.

Question: How does the MERS screwup apply to people who diligently pay on their mortgage (like me) for houses they may or may not own if the MERS situation is as bad as it sounds in the Alternet article. Food for thought don't you think?

Addendum: It's against the law for a creditor to threaten a debtor with the lowering of their credit score if they request/demand proof that the creditor has in their possession the signed note (or a complete record of legally verified documents, i.e. signed, showing who owns the document and where said document(s) reside) whether it be a mortgage, cc contract or any other document pertaining to a business agreement where money goes from one party to another.

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