Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Homestead Seminar
We held a Homestead seminar at the Tewksbury Senior Center on Monday night. The registry was invited as part of a comprehensive program dealing with "retirement planning". About forty people attended. The seminar began with a Power Point presentation on Social Security. It was very informative and interesting(you can tell I'm getting older). About thirty of the people in attendance filled out a Homestead. Some younger people, not yet interested in "retirement planning" came just to fill out the Homestead. A few that came had older forms which had been taken off our website a few years ago. It shows the Homestead is something people "absolutely have to do", but never find the time. It's enjoyable to do these seminars and its a nice service. Especially, knowing how busy people are today.
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3 comments:
Question- Was there any discussion about the current status of case law regarding equity lines and the standard "waiver of homestead" paragraph and whether it completely waives the homestead or merely subordinates it? I've heard attorney give differing opinions on this over the years. I find it so frustrating that the standard mortgage form doesn't use the word sudordinate instead of waive. It seems it would give the lender the same protection without inconveniencing the borrower. I asked to edit the wording at my last re-fi closing and was told the "boiler-plate" can't be touched or else the bank has a hard time selling it in a block on the seconary market.
Thanks, Dan
The law is still ambiguous on this issue, and I'm not sure use of the word "subordinate" solves the problem. In Massachusetts, a mortgage is a deed. So technically, if a new deed voids an existing homestead, then a new mortgage would do the same. At least that's the logic of that line of thinking. Others think that a mortgage is just a lien and therefore doesn't void the homestead. I'm not sure which is correct, but the existence of such ambiguity certainly indicates a need to clarify this statutorily.
Thank you for such a well thought out answer. Any legislators reading this?
Dan
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