Since you seem to have knowledge on this, would destroying mortgage notes do anything in the long term? I mean surely the bank would have records of who had mortgages and surely they would be able to look up how long they had been paying those mortgages? Just destroying the original contract or a couple months worth of records probably wouldn’t do much unless the bank kept really poor records?
Unfortunately, not a core area of interest for me, so I don’t have much particular knowledge on the topic. All I can really say is that some early 20th century business practices were really ad hoc, so it’s not unbelievable that some banks may not have kept comprehensive backups or other forms of documentation, which, in turn, could make any ongoing or subsequent civil cases over prior payment vs. nonpayment “He said vs. she said”, which is certainly more favorable for any of the (many) folks at the time who were struggling to pay their mortgages.
Since you seem to have knowledge on this, would destroying mortgage notes do anything in the long term? I mean surely the bank would have records of who had mortgages and surely they would be able to look up how long they had been paying those mortgages? Just destroying the original contract or a couple months worth of records probably wouldn’t do much unless the bank kept really poor records?
Unfortunately, not a core area of interest for me, so I don’t have much particular knowledge on the topic. All I can really say is that some early 20th century business practices were really ad hoc, so it’s not unbelievable that some banks may not have kept comprehensive backups or other forms of documentation, which, in turn, could make any ongoing or subsequent civil cases over prior payment vs. nonpayment “He said vs. she said”, which is certainly more favorable for any of the (many) folks at the time who were struggling to pay their mortgages.
Interesting, thank you for your assessment.