The Pooling and Servicing Agreement is the collections of rules that dictate what can and cannot be done with the trust.  This document is filed with the SEC for each Trust.  Trusts were developed by 1000′s of loan that were grouped together to form the trust.  These Trusts were sold on the market where 100-1000′s of unknown investors purchased pieces of the Trust.   Reviewing the PSA document and knowing more about your trust can provide useful information in determining  how to approach defending your home. If you see  MERS listed on your deed, your mortgage was placed in a Trust. There are some Deeds that actually list the name of the trust, yet there are many that are not.  If your’s is listed on your Deed, your work will be much easier.   Follow the directions below.

It may be very valuable to your case for you to have a certified copy of your Pooling and Servicing Agreement (“PSA”), your Prospectus and your Prospectus Supplement.  The bank worked hard to hide it from you, and their attorney will probably stonewall you in discovery and argue every reason in the world why it either doesn’t exist, is irrelevant or why the dog ate it, in which case it’s still available, but not very pretty.  Once you receive your PSA, you have to analyze it.  A PSA is typically between 150 – 700 pages long.  It takes us about one full day to completely analyze a PSA.

Finding a PSA and its related prospectus takes skill.  You can do this yourself if you have the time and investigative skills to figure it out.  Or, you can take the easy way out and do what we do – hire Mario Kenny to find it.  He typically charges $850 for that service.   If you are going to hire Mario Kenny, skip this and go to the bottom of the page to read something he wrote.  Otherwise, here is how to find your PSA:

If the securitization of your mortgage loan was public, these documents must be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They are available to the public at http://www.sec.gov (EDGAR ONLINE)

Get your copy of the promissory note and the deed of trust. Look at these documents and find the name of the original lender and the date the mortgage loan was made (the date you signed it). Write that information down.

You may get lucky and find your PSA the easy way – by placing in your internet search box the name of your original lender followed by “8-K”, or a variant, such as “8k” or “8K” and hitting the search button. It would look something like this “Wells Fargo 8-k”. You should get hits with the names of securitized pools (trusts) frequently in a form similar to this – “X Mortgage Security Asset Backed Pass-Through Certificates Series 200Y-Z”, where “X” is the name of the original lender, “Y” is the year you got your loan, and “Z” is the month you got your loan (“Z” may be up to four months after you got your loan as the trust closing date must be funded within 90 days of the trust’s “cut-off” date – not your closing date.)

If you get too many hits, narrow it down a bit by adding to your search terms different configurations of the year and month that the trust closed. The earliest the trust could have closed would be the year and month you got your loan. If you got your loan in January, 2006, you would write it like this: “2006-1”; or try this: “2006 1.” Because the trust could close up to 4 months later, also try it like this: “2006-2” or “2006 2” and “2006-3” or “2006 3” and “2006-4” or “2006 4.” The whole format would look something like this: “Wells Fargo 8-k 2006-2.” If the loan was taken out in December, 2006, you will search not only 2006, but 2007 as well.

If that’s not successful, go to http://www.sec.gov and click on “Search for Company Filings” under “Filing & Forms (EDGAR).” Under “General-Purpose Searches,” click on “Companies & other filers.” Then, in the “Enter your search information” box, type in the name of your original lender next to “Company name” and click on the “Find Companies” button. Companies’ names are often made up of more than one word, so you may have to try your search using the full name, as well as only part of the name. Try it every way you must to get a “hit.” Several companies may have similar names, so watch out for that.

You will see a long list of the names of securitized pools of loans. You will be looking for all the names that are similar to the name of your original lender. Once you find them, your next must narrow down the search to the right time period for your loan. If the trust “cut-off” date fell before your loan was signed, you’ve got the wrong trust. Because of this, you cannot rely simply on the “Y” and “Z” dates. You need to do a search within the PSA for the “cut-off” date to make sure you have the right trust. Your lender may have securitized several pools of loans within a short time frame, so the first one you find that seems like a match may not be correct.

Once you find a match – or matches – write down their names and the document numbers associated with them (called a CIK). Then click on the CIK. Click on that number. There will be a list of documents filed with the SEC that are related to this pool of loans. Search as you scroll down, looking for a document titled “Prospectus” and “Pooling and Servicing Agreement.” If you find them, save them to your computer and also bookmark the page you found them on. If you don’t see either of these, go to the Table of Contents and search again.

Once you find your PSA, you then need to contact the SEC and request a certified copy of it (along with a certified copy of your Prospectus and Prospectus Supplement (if a supplement exists).  You will need a certified copy because that certification makes it admissible into evidence if the document is relevant.

If you find yourself in an unfortunate situation of losing or about to your home to wrongful fraudulent foreclosure, visit: http://www.fightforeclosure.net