A second allonge signed by a bank that had already stopped existing

Here is a collateral file worth studying, of the kind that turns up on a performing note somebody wants to sell a piece of. The borrower looks fine. Forty-one payments, never thirty days late, escrowed taxes and insurance, servicer statements matching the amortization schedule to the penny. On performance alone, most buyers would wire. The chain is the problem. The original lender endorses the note in blank on an allonge, which is ordinary. Then a second allonge, stapled in, endorses from a lender to the seller's entity, and it is 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. Either someone backdated a fix, or someone used a stamp that should have been in a drawer. The seller's answer in a case like that is usually the same. The recorded assignment in the county is clean and the servicer has been collecting for three years without a problem. Both can be true. Neither one answers what happens the day you need to enforce and a borrower's attorney pulls the same staple. How that document actually plays depends on state law and on a real attorney reading it, which is exactly why it is a poor decision to make at eleven at night. The part worth carrying forward is that the note was performing beautifully. The income was real. The right to it was the thing with a hole in it.