Reply With QuoteSounds like legal mumbo jumbo for determining who gets the house and/or debt should you and your wife die. Is someone else on the paperwork besides you two?
So after refinancing our mortgage, we got a "appointment of successor trustee" document in our mail that looks officially notarized. It's completely incomprehensible, and the internet tells me jack about what this is.
Anyone know?
Sounds like legal mumbo jumbo for determining who gets the house and/or debt should you and your wife die. Is someone else on the paperwork besides you two?
In Tennessee it's called a "substitute trustee," and it's usually the law firm empowered to initiate foreclosure proceedings if you default on your mortgage. You have a "deed of trust," and the successor trustee oversees it to make sure it gets paid.
I know jack about foreclosure (well, just enough to be dangerous), but the whole "trustee" concept may be just in states that have non-judicial foreclosure available.
Just call your bank/mortgage company representative and ask, since it looks official.
Beware of phishing scams soliciting personal info - if it has a number to call, don't just rely on the correspondence for the contact info and double-check it against your representative's card info, etc.
Good point. Thanks.
I want to emphasize this.Originally Posted by Desslock
I worked in mortgage lending at a small community bank in Massachusetts for many years. And while I don't know if it's the same in Washington, in Mass., deeds, mortgages and other real estate records are all public. There are tons of dirtbag companies that hang out at the Registry of Deeds for the sole purpose of making a list of all the real estate transactions that occur on a given day for the sole purpose of soliciting the people involved.
Most commonly, it was things like people wanting to sell you new windows and siding and that sort of thing, or maybe insurance. But occasionally you'd get some scammer trying to take advantage of people. At one point we got a ton of calls from customers of ours who had received letters offering to put their mortgage loan on autopay, and that if you paid your loan twice a month instead of monthly, you'd pay it off sooner and here's a form to sign up for it. One customer brought the letter in to show us, and if you didn't know any better, you might think it had been sent by us... our bank name was in large letters all over the letter... where the dirtbag company name was in very small print.
It's easy to take advantage of people this way, because many people may assume that it must be legit, since who else would know that they just bought a house / refinanced? Well, if it's public records, just about everyone can know.
Oh, it's clearly not a scam document; there's no phone numbers on the entire thing, it's notarized, and it's something to do with the refinancing. I'm just amazed they'd send me this with no information whatsoever about what it's for.
Everyone should be clear on what a notary stamp actually indicates. It means that a licensed notary checked a valid form of ID and witnessed the person on that ID sign his or her name to the document so stamped. Nothing more. It does not attest to the information in the document in any way. There's a reason that the guy at the local Mail Boxes Etc can be a notary public.
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