Release of lien and mortgage company liability

[slcurtin]

What is the name of your state?What is the name of your state? PA

What is the law regarding the responsibility of a mortgage company to issue a release of lien at the satisfaction of a mortgage (time to issue with the tax burea, etc)? If they fail to comply with the requirements, what civil penalities can they face as a result of their failure to comply with their legal obligations.

At issue, we recently made a sales agreement on our old home and the original mortgage from 1983 which was refinanced in 1986 and paid in full was never issued a release of lien with our local tax office. We sent all the documentation we had to the mortgage company who held this original mortgage and to date they STILL have not issued the release and are refusing to do so. Included in the documentation was a list of documents from the tax bureau that was listed on our home since 1947 (the year of its construction). The mortgage company has been extremely uncooperative.

The previous law was that there was no need to prove damages and that a suit could be inclusive of damages and three times the original mortgage amount. Is this still in effect? If not, what are the new requirements?

 

[amortgageman]

Ask the mortgage company what your balance is?

 

[nextwife]

" the original mortgage from 1983 which was refinanced in 1986 and paid in full was never issued a release of lien with our local tax office."

The original mtg was paid off in 1986. No release was ever sent to the RODs office. I've seen many cases like this, and the lender bounces you from dept to department because all the old files are in storage in some warehouse and no one wants to bother ordering them and spending time on a paid off loan.

Give me a few minutes to look up your state's laws. In my state., a lender is subject to significant fines for such failure to release within a certain time frame. Generally a faxed copy of that state statute sent to them along with the title commitment showing their open mortgage, and a copy of the pay-off settlement statement from the closing that paid off the loan seems to get action from them.

 

[slcurtin]

Wells Fargo has no interest to date to comply with anything that they are required to do. We have faxed over the title search with the open lien several times and have sent over every document that was available through the ROD in our county. To date the lien still exists. Because of this the closing was done with a band-aid and we still show an outstanding lien on the property in our names. There has to be some type of civil liability available to us against Wells Fargo. They have called several times including the day after the closing to let us know they still had nothing, my response was that I had the name of a lawyer and a phone number for them to call.

This needs to be resolved completely and out of our names on the title search. What are our legal options against Wells Fargo for failing to provide the SOL to the ROD in a timely and reasonable fashion?