> So who's been getting all the mortgage payments?
In this context: who cares?
> If the legal claims are not clear, what about the money flow?
If I send you money for no legal reason, I'm not sure I have recourse. But: if I stop, and you can't prove that I *should* be sending you money, you're the one with no recourse.
I've noticed over the years that some of the times that I've refinanced not everything lined up. But so long as we both maintain the fiction, everything is fine.
Don't forget that a contract is still a contract without a written memorialization; I would guess that 99% of all contracts are oral. It's only if something goes wrong that you'd have to get back to something written. In this case, I'm not convinced that this will turn into "free houses" for anyone; but I'm glad that at least some people are stepping up to force due process. As usual, IANAL, but the process of affidavit-in-lieu-of-document is well regarded as Standard in the US; this idea of mass-printing of them because they believe none of the documents exist is lazy and will probably be stopped by some clever judges. But I doubt it will result in many free houses.
(I think it's a little weird to be calling this 'fraud' as tempting as it is to label foreclosures as criminal in some way ... I'm sure there's plenty of fraud to be uncovered in this whole mess, but this specific kind of foolishness isn't it)
/jordan