Rights of a mortgagor
The mortgagor retains the right of redemption and has the following rights.
- The right to repay of the loan and have the property reassigned to them.
- On repayment they can require the mortgagee to assign the mortgage to a third party as may happen if a new lender is used.
- They can at their own expense make copies or abstracts of the documents of title to the property.
Mortgagees of a life insurance policy
Life insurance policies are commonly mortgaged to banks, building societies and life offices. A life office giving a loan on the back of one of its own polices will do so by mortgage deed. A mortgage deed for a life policy will have the normal attributes of any other mortgage deed plus some additional conditions that relate to life policies. Conditions commonly found are as follows,
- A covenant by the mortgagor to continue to pay the premiums as they become due and to restore the policy if it lapses.
- A covenant that the life insurance policy is valid, and if for any reason it becomes invalid, the mortgagor agrees to take out a new equivalent life policy and then mortgage that to the mortgagee.
- The right for the lender to pay any premiums in arrears and had that cost to the loan.
- The power for the mortgagee to surrender the policy to the life office.
Most life offices are willing to grant loans on the security of their own policies where those policies have a surrender value. The mortgagor will execute a mortgage deed to the life office on the life policy with conditions similar to those mentioned above. The power to surrender may apply if the life premiums and loan interest repayments are not kept up to date. Generally the life office will only lend if it can get a first charge on the policy.
Equitable mortgages
For an equitable mortgage only the equitable interest is transferred and not the legal interest in the property. This maybe because the mortgagor only retains an equitable interest in the property or because the documentation is informal and not sufficient to convey legal interest.
An example of this is the deposit of title deeds together with a memorandum of deposit. In some cases there may only be a deposit of the deeds and a clear intention shown that there is an intention to create a charge.
An equitable mortgagee has no power of sale because there is no legal assignment of title to the property. Under an equitable mortgage the mortgagee can give a good discharge (argument) for entitlement to the proceeds of any life claim but can not surrender the policy without the mortgagor’s corroboration.
Where an equitable mortgage is repaid a signed receipt from the lender is all that is needed because there has been no legal assignment on interest.