Mortgage Servicing Bill of Good Faith and Fair Dealing?

    Here is the question and the predicate for it:

When you take out a home mortgage, do you expect to be treated fairly and competently by your bank or loan servicer?

Most likely you do. But the widely publicized "robo-signing" and foreclosure scandals suggest that for thousands of homeowners, fair dealing and competence have not been routinely available at some of the largest mortgage servicing operations in the country.

Kenneth R. Harney, "Borrowers May Get a Mortgage Servicing Bill of Rights/In Response to Alleged Abuses, State Attorneys General Have Crafted a Draft Proposal That Sets Out Minimum Standards and Operating Procedures That Would Govern How Homeowners Are Treated" (Los Angeles Times Online, Sunday, March 20, 2011).

   The 50 State Attorneys General propose this answer:  As a central part of their proposed settlement with "the 14 biggest banks and servicers," mortgage servicers would agree to a new mortgage servicing bill of rights for consumers setting out "minimum standards and operating procedures that would govern how homeowners are treated."  Kenneth R. Harney, "Borrowers May Get a Mortgage Servicing Bill of Rights/In Response to Alleged Abuses, State Attorneys General Have Crafted a Draft Proposal That Sets Out Minimum Standards and Operating Procedures That Would Govern How Homeowners Are Treated" (Los Angeles Times Online, Sunday, March 20, 2011).

   The core of the proposed minimum standards and operating procedures is Good Faith and Fair Dealing.

 

As an aside, the title of the linked newspaper article refers to "alleged abuses" concerning mortgages.  That seems like newspapers' way of describing criminals caught red-handed, as "alleged perpetrators".

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