Supreme Court to rule on stripping
by: Henry Meier
Good morning, if this headline got your attention, get your mind out of the gutter. Think in bankruptcy parlance. A “strip off” occurs when a court cancels a lien that is wholly unsecured.
On Monday, the Supreme Court decided to hear an important case to answer this question: can a court overseeing a Chapter 7 Bankruptcy cancel a junior lien on a residential mortgage where the value of the property is so low that there is no equity with which to pay back the subordinate lien holder? The Supreme Court decided to consolidate two cases from the 11th Circuit (Bank of America v. Caulkett and Bank of America v. Toledo-Cardona). Both cases deal with residential mortgages that tumbled in value once the Great Recession hit. The homes tumbled so much in value, in fact, that there wasn’t enough money in either house to pay back the holder of the principle mortgage, let alone the holders of home equity lines of credit taken out on the properties.
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