Legal Claims Against a Bank and FDIC Takeovers
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011There are two big problems that should be solved when a bank goes out of business and is taken over by the FDIC. The first is whether or not all of the proper procedures of the FDIC must be gone through by the debtors before they can have a court analyze their claims against the original bank. The second is which claims against mortgage lender misconduct would even survive the legal protections the FDIC has.
In terms of the first issue, regulations dictate the administrative claims procedure that debtors must go through when a bank fails and is taken over by the FDIC. In essence, the FDIC has the right to disallow claims made by debtors, but the agency must mail out a notice informing them of homeowners’ right to present their claims within a specified amount of time (90 days from the date the notice is published). Then the agency has another 180 days to evaluate if it will reject the claim or not.
The second issue relates to which claims would survive a bank takeover. The FDIC has numerous protections against claims that might have been made against the original lender, current mortgage holder, and servicing company. Borrowers and their attorneys will have to address a number of questions to decide if and what claims would survive.