According to this, "each deed or other document transferring a mortgage interest must be filed with the Recorder of Deeds within 30 days of execution."  Execution, as I look it up in a legal dictionary, means the completion and formal signing of a document, such as a deed, contract, or lease.  So, depending on how you read this, it seems like the after-the-fact assignments could still be legal, so long as the actual documents are filed within 30 days of being signed and notarized.  I'm not sure about this, though.  If the electronic assignments within MERS are considered "documents", then it sounds like they'd have to be filed within 30 days of the actual creation of the record in MERS.  I think that they need these electronic transfers to be considered "documents" in other contexts, so my hunch is that mortgage transfers by MERS alone and not filed in the public record are not legal.

I'm still going to stand by my general position here, until and unless I'm pushed off it.  If laws prohibiting after the fact recording of mortgage assignments were widespread, I would have suspected that we woule have seen foreclosure defense attorneys bringing up laws like this when attacking foreclosure documents, if such laws existed.  I have yet to see this line of attack used even once, and I do make the rounds of the foreclosure defense sites not infrequently.  I do not definitively know the law in every jurisdiction, and never claimed that knowledge. While this new information is definitely on point and calls into question the validity of my argument as it applies to DC specifically,  I'm not sure this flies in the face of my general belief that after the fact mortgage assignments are probably legal in at least most states.  I do not definitively know the law in all states, and I'm not claiming that I do-- I merely challenged Robert to cite such a law, because I didn't think he had the goods that the practice which he was complaining about was not perfectly legal, and meanwhile he was arguing for technical adherence to law elsewhere.