Quiet Title Strategies

Most people do not have a clear understanding about Quiet Title, because it means one thing to them and another thing in court. The common misconception about quiet title is that it is a thing that just happens, like the result of a magic bullet. In fact quiet title is a court process that begins with a lawsuit by the homeowner and ends with a court order declaring that the mortgage or deed of trust should be removed from the chain of title.

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The most typical use of quiet title claims is clearing the chain of title of recorded documents that mistakenly or fraudulently describe the wrong property. The use of quiet title against a mortgage or deed of trust does not generally get traction in a court of law.

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But the more recent strategy of attacking the assignment of mortgage and seeking nullification of that instrument has met with some success and it should succeed, because you are attacking the facial and substantive validity of that specific instrument and not the entire mortgage or deed of trust. That strategy merely attacks the technical requirements for creation and recording of an an instrument affecting title to real property and attacking the substantive validity of the assignment by revealing that the debt was not transferred to the assignee by a party who owned the debt.

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The current fad of proving unenforceability of the indebtedness does not provide the foundation for quiet title unless you can prove that that (a) the indebtedness never existed or (b) the debt has been satisfied. It is entirely possible for a court of law to determine that the mortgage or deed of trust cannot be enforced by the parties who initiated foreclosure. But that does not mean that the mortgage or deed of trust is a nullity. So winning the case on the debt against a particular party who sought to enforce it does not automatically mean that you proved a prima facie case that the debt was never or is not now subject to enforcement by anyone.

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The elements for quiet title are fairly simple. The lawsuit asks for a declaratory judgment finding, as a matter of fact and law, that the encumbrance is a nullity, which means that legally the encumbrance does not exist — not that it should not exist. In plain language that means that a judge finds that the mortgage or deed of trust does not secure any indebtedness owed by the owner of the property to the mortgagee on a mortgage or the beneficiary on a deed of trust.

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 The “mortgagee” or “beneficiary” includes legal successors to the named mortgagee on the mortgage or the named beneficiary (lender) on the deed of trust. Successfully attacking the assignment means that you have negated the assignment which returns the title to the mortgage to the previous party who might be the the original mortgagee or beneficiary or lender.

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Where MERS has been used as a buffer in the title chain legal practitioners should be aware that the MERS relationship to the original “lender” is tenuous at best and most probably nonexistent to pretenders who claim to be successors — because most loans were table funded without any legal or equitable relationship between MERS and the investment bank that funded the origination or acquisition of the loan. Since no transfer of beneficial interest or interest of a mortgagee legally exists without transfer of the debt, it is nearly impossible for anyone to show an assignment with a legal transfer of the debt from an owner of that debt.

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The only way the pretender lenders can succeed is by wearing down the homeowner who must be willing to expend considerable time, money and energy defending his property. They can do this by using legal arguments that come from legal presumptions a rising from the apparent facial validity of self serving documents they have fabricated, forged or robosigned to create the illusion of a legal chain of title.

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Securitization has opened many doors to homeowners who persistently and effectively challenge the parties who initiate foreclosures. It is now almost always true that the party who initiates a foreclosure is not the actual owner of the debt nor does that party represent a legal entity that owns the debt. Transfer of a mortgage without the debt has been stated by courts throughout the 50 states to be a “nullity,” which means that the transfer never legally occurred despite the writing on a face of a document purporting to be an assignment of mortgage.

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The word, “nullity” is what you are after and it probably only applies to the assignment. It probably will never be applied, despite arguments to the contrary, to the actual encumbrance except after a period of years after the attempts to foreclose have failed multiple times, it is evident that the the debt will never be enforced or is otherwise barred by the doctrine of latches or the statute of limitations.

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Thus strategically it is important to start off with an analysis of legal title performed by a title analyst who has education and training to do it. That normally means an attorney but it could mean a person who writes title policies or who assesses title risk for title insurance companies. After the analysis, then you need someone who can suggest strategies and tactics that can be reviewed and implemented by local counsel  or pro se with the guidance of local counsel using hybrid legal services.

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