Attorneys representing creditors in the state of New Jersey should be advised that the New Jersey Office of Foreclosure, beginning on Thursday, May 1, 2008, will no longer accept or file a complaint unless the creditor’s attorney includes an “assignment of mortgage into the plaintiff” or the “date that the loan was acquired by the plaintiff,” according to attorneys who have been following the guideline adjustments.
Two attorneys in the state, Mario Serra with Fein, Such, Kahn & Shepard, P.C. and firm shareholder Emmanuel Argentieri with Parker McCay, P.A., have been following the changes closely because of the minor impact the new requirements could have on attorneys who are not prepared to show an assignment of mortgage.

Argentieri says the May 1, 2008, date is actually an extension that was granted earlier in the year when an attempt to roll out the rule was stalled.
“I guess about a month or so ago, an edict came down from the foreclosure unit, which basically said that they were rejecting foreclosure final judgments if the assignment that was given to the foreclosing mortgagee was not executed or dated prior to the filing of the foreclosure complaint,” Argentieri said. “As you can imagine, this caused quite a raucous in New Jersey because there were numerous foreclosures already in the pipeline.”
Argentieri says the deadline was set at May 1, 2008, after creditor attorneys shared their concerns about the rule changing too quickly.
“They held a meeting, and it was determined to implement this immediately would be unduly burdensome to the lender’s bar, so what they proposed to do was somewhat of a compromise,” Argentieri says. “They would allow the final judgments or the cases that were commenced prior to May 1, 2008, to proceed in normal course—and, as long as you could show you had an assignment into the foreclosure entity, you would get your final judgment.”
But, Argentieri says all cases commencing after May 1, 2008, will have to include the assignment of mortgage to move forward, and cases that commenced in the interim period—described as the period occurring after the final hearing on the subject and before May 1, 2008—will have the opportunity to move forward if the representing attorneys plead that they have an assignment now in the process of being recorded, Argentieri added.