FARM MORTGAGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 142, 19 June 1933, Page 4

FARM MORTGAGES.

LEGISLATIVE RESTRICTIONS.

FINANCIAL AGENTS ESCAPE.

At the annual meeting of the Perpetual Trustees Company in Dunedin, the chairman of directors, Mr. W. E. Reynolds, spoke as fallow:—

"In the opinion of the general manager and the executive officers of our company, the law as it stands to-day iu respect to the workings of the Mortgagors' Relief Act is inequitable in its effects. There are three principal parties concerned in the affairs of. a mortgagor farmer—viz., the farmer himself, his mortgagee, and his stock agent. Under the Act as it now stands, the recommendations of the Mortgagors Adjustment Commissions and the decisions of the courts effectively bind only two of tiie three parties—viz., the mortgagor and the mortgagee. As all three are more or less vitally interested, our officers, and also our mortgagee clients, claim (and 1 think with justification) that all decisions of both the commissions and the courts should apply to and be fully binding upon all of the said three parties. '•Where the mortgagor's position has been fully investigated by the members of the commission and adjudicated upon by the court, we find our mortgagee-clients willing enough to abide by such decision, as, of course, they must do, but a good deal of resentment exists, and is shown by reason of the fact that only two of the parties are legally bound, whilst the other (the stock firm) is at liberty to accept or reject, as it deems expedient, any such decision. Because of this circumstance we find mortgagees 'in the first stages not quite so willing as they otherwise might be to make concessions and to give extended time for payment. "There is also the" question" of nonpayment of rates and land tax and electric power board charges. These, as is fairly well known, are a charge upon the mortgagee's-security and rank in priority to his mortgage. If help is to be extended to the farmer in the way of a reduction in his interest, should it not also Ifle extended to him in respect to his rates and land tax?. Should not the adjustment commissions have authority to recommend such reductions and the courts power to order .them? Otherwise the concession is all on the part of the mortgagee. Then again, •where the mortgagee has been deprived of his right for the time being to realise on bis security, it is surely in the interests of the farmer-mortgagor that the courts should have similar power to prevent the farmer's property being sold for payment of rates in arrear and also for land tax. If the farmer is in arrear with his interest and requires protection against his mortgagee, he is equally in need of protection asrainst the risk of his property being sold because of non-payment of rates, land tax. and electric power board rates and charges for equipment supplied, or any of the foregoing."