Owners should quickly clear paid-off loan from title
It's the owner's job to ensure that his or her mortgage is removed from the title to their home when the final payment has been made.
Q. We never thought the day would come, but we have just made the final payment on our 30-year mortgage. What kind of documentation should we expect to get from the bank?
A. The lender should soon send you some type of notification that title to your home has been cleared of the mortgage or deed of trust.
Procedures vary by state. In some areas, lenders provide a document called a "mortgage-satisfaction notice" or "deed of reconveyance," which the borrower must then file at the local recorder's office. In others, banks record the notice themselves, but typically ask the customer to pay for the service.
Make sure that you follow up with the lender if you don't get the proper paperwork within 30 or 60 days. It's important to get the mortgage off the title soon, because you might not be able to clear it quickly if you later decide to sell or refinance.
Q. I have very good credit, so I get unsolicited offers for preapproved credit cards all the time. When a credit-card issuer checks my report to see if it wants to offer me a preapproved card, does the inquiry drive my overall score down? I'm concerned, because I plan to refinance my mortgage soon and want to keep my score high so that I can qualify for the best loan terms possible.
A. Too many inquiries can indeed push your score lower, but only if they're initiated by you as part of an effort to obtain more credit.
Though companies that hawk preapproved cards indeed check your report before deciding whether to make an unsolicited offer, such inquiries are known in the industry as "soft hits" and have no effect on your overall score unless you decide to accept the new card.
Q. My ex-husband is a very successful doctor who pays me a total of $4,600 each month in alimony and child support. I do not work because I am busy raising our 8-year-old and going to night school. I have been looking for a larger apartment in an area where rents are about $1,500 per month. Can landlords discriminate against me because my sole source of income comes from my ex-husband instead of a 9-to-5 job?
A. No, landlords or property managers cannot deny you a rental simply because you are not currently employed.
Federal fair-housing laws prohibit landlords from discriminating against prospective tenants based solely on their source of income, provided that the money is legally received, verifiable and is paid directly to the rental applicant or the tenant's representative. This means that it's OK for a manager to reject an applicant if the money comes from an illegal operation (think drug-dealing or prostitution), but it's a violation of federal law if the landlord refuses to rent simply because the money is derived from alimony or child-support payments rather than a job.
There are, however, some gray areas in both federal and state anti-discrimination laws. For example, a landlord is allowed to set minimal monthly income standards for prospective tenants as long as those standards are applied evenly to everyone. If the landlord says that all prospects must make at least $3,000 per month to be eligible for an apartment unit, their application can be booted if they don't meet the threshold regardless of whether they have a job or instead depend on alimony or support payments from their former spouse.
The next time you file a rental application for you and your child, it could help if you also would include in your "app" a copy of the court-decree that awards you $4,600 per month in alimony and child-support payments, plus all bank statements or other financial records that show that the payments have been received on a steady monthly basis. This can help to prove to the landlord that you're not only entitled to the payments, but that your ex-husband is religiously making them.
If a landlord balks at taking your application because you don't work full-time, file a complaint with your local fair-housing agency or online at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Internet site, www.hud.gov.
• For the booklet "Straight Talk About Living Trusts," send $4 and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to David Myers/Trust, P.O. Box 2960, Culver City, CA 90231-2960.
© 2009, Cowles Syndicate Inc.