An unbroken chain of ownership must exist before a foreclosure sale can

occur.

A Plaintiff that fails to adequately trace the loan from the original lender to the
Plaintiff faces defenses to the foreclosure including that the Plaintiff lacks standing,
failed to join indispensable parties, and failed to state a cause of action. A requisite
chain of assignments must be recorded or filed in the foreclosure action to prove
Plaintiff is the real party in interest to enforce the mortgage note. Plaintiff may be
unable to show a chain of assignments from the Originator to the Sponsor who
organized the securitization of the mortgage, to the Depositor and finally to the
Trustee. Each of these parties must be included within the chain of assignments and
endorsements, or in the case of a blank endorsement, there must be both a delivery
and an acceptance receipt to document the transfer and delivery of the bearer note
from the Originator to the Sponsor, from the Sponsor to the Depositor, and from the
Depositor to the Trust. Plaintiff must also show that this Note and Mortgage were
part of the res of the Trust and that they were transferred to the Trust within the
window of time between origination and cutoff dates that the Trust could accept
assets. See generally, In re Hayes, 393 B.R. 259 (Bankr. D. Mass. 2008); In re Kang
Jin Hwang, 396 B.R. 757 (Bankr. C.D. Calif. 2008); In re: Shelter Development
Group, Inc., 50 B.R. 588 (Bankr. S.D. Fla. 1985); In re Foreclosure actions, 2007 WL
4034554 at *1 (N.D. Ohio 2007). Where a plaintiff does not own a mortgage at the
time of filing a foreclosure action, the case must be dismissed for failing to comply
with statutory requirements of standing.

Who are the various parties involved in my mortgage transaction?

The documents originally signed by the homeowner at the loans origination include
the Mortgage and Note. The Mortgage must be properly assigned to the named
Trust, generally in the following sequence:

a. Assignment from Originator to Sponsor: Countrywide

b. Assignment from Sponsor to Depositor: EMC Mortgage Corp

c. Assignment from Depositor to the Trust. Citibank as Trustee

Document custodian is Wells Fargo

The Originator wrote and funded the original mortgage transaction. The Sponsor is
the party who organized the securitization process and submitted the necessary
registration statements to the SEC. The Depositor would be the last party in the
chain of transfer to own the mortgage note before transfer to the Trust. The Trustee
is the owner of the mortgage note for the benefit of the parties who invested in the
bonds issued by the Trust. There is also a Master Document Custodian who is
designated by the PSA to maintain custody and control of all the original notes and
mortgages. MERS is another entity involved in these transactions. MERS stands for
Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems and it is basically the file cabinet that
maintains an electronic database of these mortgages.

You may only have dealt with a loan Servicer. There are various servicers involved
too, including a Master Servicer and a Default Servicer. Importantly, the Servicer
does not own the Note and Mortgage, it merely is in charge of collecting your
payments and servicing the loan. The foreclosure lawsuit cannot be brought in the
name of the Servicer as they are not the real party in interest and do not have
standing to foreclose on your home.

The purpose of securitized trusts and limitations of transfer.

In the event that the Plaintiff asserts there was an equitable transfer, the Trust has
no authority to accept an equitable transfer of a note. Each transfer must be a true
sale for purposes of creating a bankruptcy remote structure which was the very
purpose of the securitization process. Each transfer must follow the specific steps
designated in the structure as set forth in Section 2.01 entitled Conveyance of
Mortgage Loans of the Pooling and Servicing Agreement which is the document that
set up the Trust (PSA). Additionally, all steps in the transfer process must be true
and complete sales between the parties in order to qualify the Trust for what is
called REMIC qualification under the Internal Revenue Code for Real Estate
Mortgage Conduit securitization trusts, or REMIC trusts.

The purpose of the securitization process was to make the mortgage note legally
protected from any claims a bankruptcy trustee or the FDIC might assert against the
originator of the loan. This requires a series of true sales and transfers pursuant to
the mandatory transfer rules of the Pooling and Servicing Agreement. True sales
and transfers were required in order to obtain a certain tax status as a REMIC trust.

In addition to a lack of proper assignment of the Mortgage, in many cases, the

Plaintiff is unable to show proper endorsement on the Note or the delivery
certificates for any endorsement in blank. Without this, the Plaintiff should not be
able to foreclose on your home. Many states provide that a mortgage follows the
note and only a note is required to foreclose (virtually ignoring the necessity of a
proper assignment). However, even in those cases, if the Plaintiff has lost the Note,
or if the note was not properly transferred pursuant to the terms of the Trust, how
can the Mortgage lien be enforced?