Video Summary
[inaudible 00:00:05] follow up, one of the followers asked a question about his parents. His parents passed away, and they are trying to deal with the mortgage company that has a lean against their parents’ house. The lender will not give them any information as far as the loan’s concerned. They would like to keep the house, be able to continue to make the mortgage payments and get the information.
One of the first questions that I have to ask with this follow up question of the follower, has there been a probate proceeding whereby your parents’ estate has been probated. If not, once the probate is started, the personal representative or the executor of your parents’ estate would be able to obtain this information from the mortgage company.
If, however, your parents executed what they call a life estate deed or a ladybird deed, so you wound up with the property as a result of their passing away, and there was no probate and they had previously conveyed it to you or you are joint tenant, this is problematic as far as getting the lender to deal with you, and this gets us on the topic of a quick-claim deed, but there is no easy solution to this.
There is a federal statute which is called the Garn-St Germain Act which says that the lender cannot call the loan due and payable whenever someone passes away and the homestead property goes to the children. Unfortunately, most lenders, whenever you try and deal with their service department, are not familiar with this, and you really have to take it to the next level. If you find yourself in that situation, I suggest you contact the lender or whoever has your loan and talk to them about, use the word Garn, G-A-R-N, and St Germain, those are legislators that passed this. That statute is 20 or 30 years old, and it’s a federal statute.
I tried to help somebody in this situation and, unfortunately, the amount of time that I spent on it turned out to be a fairly expensive proposition for me to handle it. I think I was will Wells Fargo, and I went all the way to the President’s office and they finally agreed to give the loan information to the beneficiary.
Hopefully I’ve answered your question, although I haven’t given you good news. By the way, you can’t use a quick-claim deed to transfer property out of a descendant’s name into your name. You have to go through a probate proceeding.
If you have any questions, give me a call at 727-847-2288.