Homeowner's And Mortgagees You May Yet Have A Credit Reprieve

Homeowner's on death's door with mortgage payment problems and the bailiff at the gate you may now have a glimmer of hope with of all things the legal system with all its complexities may well have provided you with relief from foreclosure and personal bankruptcy, never mind the effects on your personal credit and credit history. You may well live through all the through the events of a bank homeowner or property foreclosure, thus sparing your credit rating and history blemish. You may yet live to a time in the near future when you will again be able to check current mortgage rates and safely ask for your credit history, in a positive and good light, from a local or national credit tracking and reporting institution.

This is the long and the short of it. A landmark case ruling was recently issued in September 2009 by the Supreme Court of the state of Kansas. The ruling was that third party "nominee companies "have no right or standings what so ever to bring out foreclosure - that is to kick you out you out of house or home, by initating "foreclosure" proceedings. Though this ruling of the Supreme Court of Kansas is not binding on any other legal jurisdictions in the rest of the Unites States - it serves as a major precedent and will certainly be watched by the other legal jurisdictions of the US and will certainly figure in the arguments of prominent lawyers and attorneys in their legal cases to prevent the start of and completion of foreclosure and eviction proceeding across the other states in the rest of the USA.

Here is how it works and all worked. To make it easy for the financial institutions to divvy up into smaller packages, and yet reassure the banks that their collateral on which they were loaning the mortgage money was safe, a third party was set up to register and track these sliced and diced whole smorgasbord of mortgages. These companies and organizations owned the whole mortgages on paper and were assigned the tasks of keeping records of what was owed , and how the individual parts of any sets of mortgages were assigned and which investor or investors somewhere in the US or even across the worldwide globe owned which and what portion of these mortgages. In reality and actuality homeowner never know who in actuality owns the mortgage and they owe the physical payments to. On top of that the home owner and mortgage owner never knows what percentages and to how many investors he owes money and mortgage interest and principal payments to. On top of that it's not even static. Along with these schemes portions and percentages of your mortgage due can be sold, bought and traded on a regular and ongoing basis - day in and week out. One week your home could conceivably be owned by a number of mutual funds, the next week union or private pension funds, and the next month foreign investors or bank holdings. Either that or a combination of all of the above.

The most widely known of this electronic record keeping mortgage holding "fronts" is a private company named "MERS". The name "MERS" itself is an acronym for "Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems". MERS job and role in the financial and credit systems was to register mortgages electronically and provide detailed, accurate and timely changes in the ownership of the mortgage financial instruments. On top of that as the "wheels went round and round", individual mortgage holders could never really access the true owners and holders of their individual mortgages. If they did try for legal redress in situations of abuse or predatory lending practices they would find that in the legal proceedings that they were stymied and limited in options and accountability.

All that has changed now. The MERS organization itself is no small player. Fully half of all registered mortgages in the US are registered by MERS. MERS the court has ruled is a "straw man" is not the actual holder of the mortgages. No money is owed to it directly. As a ruling this significant and landmark court ruling gives many homeowners in dire straights breathing room. It seems that at least in Kansas for now, and most likely soon throughout the land neither that MERS nor indeed anyone else has the legal authority to start or initiate or bring to fruition legal proceedings of foreclosure and eventual eviction against US homeowners in arrears on their mortgage payments. Currently in this time period of 2009 / 2010 the estimate of such cases were in the range of an unbelievable 60 million mortgages that fell into this category and categorization.

Homeowners currently in default of your mortgages and mortgage payments you may well have been given a reprieve at the final hours. In financial credit and legal terms the gate seems to swing both ways both for the investor and now for the mortgagee. / home-owner.