The second allonge is signed by a bank that had already stopped existing

A scanned collateral file landed on my desk at eleven at night for a performing note somebody wanted me to take a piece of, and I actually read it.

Borrower was fine. Forty-one payments, never thirty days late, escrowed taxes and insurance, servicer statements matched the amortization schedule to the penny. If you looked at performance only, you'd wire.

The chain was the problem. Original lender endorsed the note in blank on an allonge, fine. Then there was a second allonge, stapled, endorsing from a lender to the seller's entity, and it was signed by an assistant vice president of an institution that had been merged out of existence about eight months before the date printed under the signature. Somebody had backdated a fix, or somebody had used a stamp that should have been in a drawer.

I asked. The seller's response was that the recorded assignment in the county was clean and the servicer had been collecting for three years without a problem. Both true. Neither one answers what happens the day you need to enforce and a borrower's attorney pulls the same staple I did.

I passed. Everything about how that document would actually play depends on state law and on a real attorney reading it, which is exactly why I wasn't going to be the one deciding at eleven at night. The part that stays with me is that the note was performing beautifully. The income was real. The right to it was the thing with a hole in it.