Reverse Mortgages: Many involve securitization fraud, as with regular mortgages

Reverse mortgages are akin to the Centuries Old principle of a Life Estate or an annuity. A life estate is where typically relatives who live together would pass title to a home, during the life of often an elderly person who owned the home in fee simple, who would then live out his or her life in the home, as if still owning the home. While technically a tenant, the person in a Life Estate would have full access to the home. Reverse mortgages are similar to a Life Estate in that typically elderly persons, who have often built up a lot of equity in their homes, are able to continue to live at the home, without paying a mortgage. So in essence the mortgage is a mortgage loan, using the equity in the property to cover what would otherwise be montly payments needed to cover the loan. The loan is typically due at the sale of the home, or upon the death of the homeowner. Reverse mortgages, like regular mortgages, are subject to foreclosure if found to be in default.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sees a lot of loan fraud issues in these types of loans, and the reverse mortgages are based on underlying loans, which if securitized in the early to mid-200s era, and often even before or later than that, have the same fraud-origination and assignment problems as similarly securitized loans. Attorney Marshall is litigating a reverse mortgage lawsuit in California at the moment, and the fraud securitization issues, are in essence identical to non-reverse mortgage situations, as long as the originating loan documents had the typical securitization defects.

Marshall will then provide a covid-19 update, with a focus on force majeure issues, specifically how a borrower who was otherwise current on mortgage loan payments, is arguably not in default if the reason for defaulting on payments was solely due to unemployment caused by covid-19 shutdown and lockdown rules.