The Deed of Trust or Mortgage reflects who owns the property. If both spouses are listed on the same the money has to be paid to both.
If one spouse is only on the DOT of Mortgage that person would be funded the money.
It is never up the the individuals to decide where the funds goes. Wishful thinking.
The title company can only pay to the names that are listed on the DOT, etc. These are federal documents that we are dealing with and lots of rules apply to all of them.
It is our job to tell the consumers this and if they get hacked off get the Escrow Officer on the phone and they will put them straight. The other thing to ask is "do they" have a checking account (etc) where they are both on it (when the money is going to be funded to them both). If not they have to go and get one and I told a couple this when the husband was being coy with the wife. Then I got the Escrow Officer on the phone who spoke to the husband and she told him the same thing. He turned many shades of white. Maybe a light went off for the wife or not and that is none of my business. They were going to email the new bank account information to the escrow officer once this task was completed for funding.
One of the spouses can try their best to control disbursement of funds and that will never happen as it is basically fail safe.
This has to be a professional, direct, and a non-judgmental conversation. The bottom line is if you don't know what you are doing at the table the loan won't fund and the package will not be correct. This is how we lose really great clients and they know immediately from this that we don't know what we are doing. Plus whether you have thought about it or not the lock expiration may be in jeopardy too.
The best rule of thumb in my opinion is to never leave anything to chance or guess. I'm not an attorney, escrow officer, or MLO. My job is to close the file and if I'm not educated on something I need to immediately find out from someone with authority and not make up stuff.
This is not a soap opera and we can get a bad reputation and lose great clients because we have not educated ourselves as well as be sued.
Great work from asking for feedback and we all need it from time to time. Keep going for it. |
