“Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.”1

Excerpt:

While MERS may be named as the actual mortgagee
or its equivalent on the security instrument, in
substance its role is that of a nominee or agent.23
The language in the mortgage generally states:
“‘MERS’ is Mortgage Electronic Registration
Systems, Inc. MERS is a separate corporation that
is acting solely as nominee for Lender and
Lender’s successors and assigns. MERS is the
mortgagee under this Security Instrument.”24 Here
then begins the magic that is MERS—the dual claim
that it is both a principal (mortgagee) and
nominee/agent of the lender/factual mortgagee.25
MERS undertakes these roles but never lends
money and never gives value for the mortgage, nor
does it benefit from the proceeds of foreclosure
and/or collection actions.26 Were MERS’s
involvement in the mortgage market insignificant,
it might not pose much of a legal problem;however,
MERS appears to be involved in sixty
million loans—roughly half of all U.S. home
mortgages.27 The legal role MERS attempts to fill
and MERS’s argument as to standing is: 1) provide
a mortgage clearinghouse and eliminate recording
obligations by having MERS itself act as mortgagee
of record;28 2) allow the promissory note
evidencing the debt to be transferred freely among
MERS members ad infinitum; and 3) when default
occurs, act as the nominee of the current note
holder and mortgagee of record (rejoining the two
interests) even though the current “lender” did
not appoint MERS as mortgagee and may never have
had the right to do so. Ultimately, the argument
is something akin to a merger argument where MERS
claims that the severed interests, that of
security interest and note, are recombined in MERS
at a later date even though it received those
interests from separate entities. As others have
pointed out, MERS is attempting to derive powers
as an agent greater than the sum of the powers of
its principals.29

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