Daily Development for Wednesday, November 20, 2002

 

By: Patrick A. Randolph, Jr.
Elmer F. Pierson Professor of
Law
UMKC School
of Law
Of Counsel: Blackwell Sanders Peper Martin
Kansas City,
Missouri
prandolph@cctr.umkc.edu

 

JOINT TENANCIES; SEVERANCE; MORTGAGES: A mortgage by one joint tenant does not equitably bind the other joint tenant, even when the proceeds are used to acquire the property in question, and the death of the mortgagor joint tenant results in the other joint tenants expanding their title through survivorship, free and clear of the mortgage.

 

Townsend v. Chase Manhattan Mortgage Corp., No. 234412 (Mich. App.  11/15/02)

 

http://www.michbar.org/opinions/home.html?/opinions/appeals/2002/111502/16945.pdf

 

Plaintiff Townsend and his mother acquired property in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, and mother alone gave a note and mortgage to lender for the mortgage amount.  Later the note and mortgage were assigned to Defendant Mortgagee.

 

Mother died and son made no payments on the mortgage.  Mortgagee foreclosed, and Plaintiff moved to have the foreclosure set aside.

 

The trial court granted Mortgagee's motion for summary judgment, stating that, on the basis of the law, as well as the equities, the mortgage was not destroyed by mother's death.  Amazingly, the court appears to have gone on to conclude that not only mother's interest, but also Plaintiff's interest, was bound.  Here is some of the trial court's (very off the cuff) ruling, which was quoted extensively by the appeals court:

 

" . . . Paragraph 12 clearly states that the assigns and successors in interest are bound.  The mortgage is the security.  They didn't loan this money to Mrs. Townsend as an unsecured creditor, and willing to take the risk on a thirty year mortgage that if she passes away, their interest in the property will be extinguished.  That mortgage, it seems to me, secures an interest in the property, and not in Mrs. Townsend, and what have you.

 

And that the security interest, it seems to me, reading the statute that's been cited and the case law, that that the security interest continues on upon her death.   It would be a windfall.  It would be an absolute windfall if that were the criteria here for James Townsend to get this property debt free, simply because of the unfortunate death of the mother, relative or whoever it might is.

 

But it doesn't even reach that point of being an issue of equities, and what have you.  I'm convinced that from a legal perspective, and this mortgage and this note in her name continued on upon the death of Mrs. Townsend and continues to be an obligation."

 

Fortunately, someone on the appeals court must have known enough property law to pass the bar, and on appeal, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed.

 

First the court noted that the plaintiff was not trying to avoid the debt, which presumably was still owed by Mrs. Townsend's estate, but only the mortgage, which had nothing to which it could attach once her interest was destroyed by her death and his survivorship.

 

The appeals court notes that the trial court conception that the surviving joint tenant was bound as an "assign" is erroneous because the joint tenant took his interest at the same time that the mortgagor did.  The court characterizes each of the joint tenancy interests as a life estate with a contingent remainder.  The bank did have one case on which it could hang its hat - a Michigan precedent case in which the husband of a couple that owned as tenants by the entireties was the only one to sign a mortgage to fund the construction of a residence on the property.  After the husband died, the wife attempted to argue that her survivorship interest extinguished the mortgage, and the court ruled that the mortgage attached as an equitable interest to her estate.  So far, the case looks quite similar (and therefore equally wrong), but both conclusions are changed when we understand that the reasoning for imposing the equitable mortgage in the precedent case was that the husband, when he signed the note and mortgage, had acted as agent for the entirety estate.  No such argument was made here.

 

The court noted that the intervention of equity is sought here to save the bank from the consequences of its own mistake - when it failed to compare the title to the property to the identity of its mortgagor.  The court notes: "We think it insufficient to invoke equity to save the mortgagee from its own mistake, particularly where the mortgagee is a sophisticated commercial lender."

 

Comment: No less a lender's advocate than Jack Murray has commented: "What was the lender *thinking* here."  Of course, the answer is - not much.

 

There is some authority, however, that has bailed out lenders in this situation in title theory states by concluding that a mortgage will constitute a severance of the joint tenancy, creating a tenancy in common.  There is also some authority in lien theory states that a mortgage will create a  pro tanto severance of the joint tenancy, to the extent necessary to protect the mortgagee's interest.   See W. Stoebuck & D. Whtiman, The Law of Property 191 (3d ed. 2000).  The editor believes, and apparently Jack Murray would concur, that such a ruling stretches the law too far to protect a lender so negligent that it didn't make sure it was getting a mortgage from the owner of the property.

 

In any event, even that kind of reasoning would not have availed the mortgagee here, because the parties used a special kind of alternative joint tenancy that the editor has only seen in Michigan - one that is non- severable and indeed has the effect of creating mutual life estates with a contingent remainder in fee in the survivor.  The possibility of such joint tenancies in Michigan should have made the lender even more wary.

 

Maybe the lender's lawyers had the same law school property class as the trial court judge.

 

 

Readers are urged to respond, comment, and argue with the daily development or the editor's comments about it.

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