Would you use an ATTORNEY when signing.........

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tslippers

Would you use an Attorney when signing a Contract, Buying a car, Buying a House and Real estate, Signing a Rental Agreement. Would you use an Attorney if you did not understand what you were reading in the contract??Would you use an Attorney if it were FREE????Please explain...

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tslippers:

Good exampel, a Texan wrote this...

I bought a home in Corpus Christi at the beginning of March this year. It needed a new roof, so I made an agreement with the seller to split the cost of the roof.

All the bids we received included a Texas Winstorm WPI-8 inspection and certification.

The roofer put the roof on in record time, but didn’t get the WPI-8 as agreed. Our insurance company would void our homeowners insurance if we didn’t have the WPI-8 within 60 days. We kept calling them, and they wouldn’t return our calls. We had a family member who had done a lot of business with this roofing company to give them a call. Finally they returned our call, but it seemed to be just lip-service, as no action was taken.

We kept calling and they kept saying “someone is coming next week.” Nothing ever got done.

In the final weeks I decided to use my Pre-Paid Legal membership. One phone call and two faxes were all it took on my part.

Within five days the engineers arrived for the inspection. The actual WPI-8 certificate showed up shortly thereafter.

I don’t know what I’d have done without my PPL membership. Thanks from me as well.

Chad Landry
Texas

Jack:

Cool. And a law firm wrote his ...

http://www.expertlaw.com/library/consumer/prepaid_legal.html

Nothing damning, but the clsoing paragraph leads one to pursue additional information which may be.

AJ Skee:

If you have an attorney that would look over your contract for free, and you know the reputation of the attorney then I believe you most likely would be safe. However, I have had misguided information from an attorney and It cost my husband and me our building business. Most real estate agent work for either the buyer or the seller in the state of Georgia and that is stipulated in the contract. When buying a car just look up on the net by the Vin number to see if auto has been wrecked and check in what I think is called the kelly blue books to make sure your not over paying, otherwise you'll be what is considered up side down. And as for the rental agreement, the obligation of the agent usually is for the owner of the property. There is a saying, "Buyer beware." I suggest continue your quest as you are so that you are confident in any of your purchases.

tslippers:

Thank you, GOOD JOB!!!!

Know_it_All:

A few years ago I sold a house to a neighbor rather than go through a real estate agent. Had an attorney draw up the papers and review the sale. It was $50.00 for the attorney, would have been several thousand for the real estate agent.

If it exposes me to liability, or commits my time, effort or money, I'd have an attorney look it over.

Jack:

Surely, you MUST be joking! That, or you live in a one-horse town, or found the dumbest (or most desparate) lawyer on the planet.

Have you priced real estate attorney's fees recently? No one would stake their career on "lunch money". The risks are far too great!

Lawyer's minimums today can and do run from $1500 to $5000 -- and that is strictly for a simple legal opinion and an hour or two worth of paper shuffling.

I might add, that the tiele company that probABLY does 90% of my closings has indicated to me that most clouds on title are the result of incompetent attorneys.

Pay me now, or pay through the nose later. ;-)

If you eliminate the need for marketing, etc.; I charge $500 (per side) to facilitate a FSBO transaction. That is HALF the going price of a real estate attorney in the Mpls./St. Paul market, from my experience.

Jack:

If an attorney offered their services to me for FREE, I would be exceptionally suspicious of their motives.

First, what liability will they be opening or exploiting in the future? Second, how bad is this idiot's practice? Third, what degree of liability does this moron ADD to the transaction?

I would use a local LICENSED lawyer ONLY when I need to discuss legal matters with which I am unfamiliar.

I would use a LICENSED Realtor (not merely an agent) to discuss matters of real property.

I would use a LICENSED local mortgage originator when financing a real property.

Seeing as I am a licensed Realtor and mortgage lender, I would have no use for their generous offer, nor would any of my customers.

You aren't selling Pre-Paid Legal or one of those other MLM scams, are you?

tslippers:

How many attorney's wright you're contracts for you???
How big of a sucker do you take me for? Any time I sign a contract, I have a attorney exammin it first, last car I bought, the used car dealer tried to hit me with an extra $4250.00 in hiden feas. Didn't hapin. You do what you want, you can hide feas in the contracts, or you might be an honest man, doesn't mater to me. I will use an attorney.

By the way, Check uot the NYSE, symble of PPD, No scam can get on the NYSE. GET REAL... I do not sell it, I use it all the time. You don't, that's you're problem.. AND MY FREEDOM!!

Jack:

Hmmm. I seem to have struck a nerve. So you do actaully have Pre-paid Legal. I hope that it works for you.

However, I "fled" a mortgage company that expected its loan officers to push that stuff to their customers. I refused to stand for it.

I also know of brain-dead Realtors who are relying on Pre-paid Legal to replace their (mandatory) errors & omissions insurance. It simply does not fulfill regulatory requirements. These pitiful souls are likely to lose everything they own, when the first litigious jerk comes along.

Further, I don't wright (sic) the contracts. Our contracts are reviewed annually by a committee of real estate attorneys and published by our State Association of Realtors.

I have title attorneys review documents prior to every closing. Further, no lender is going to allow unconscionable contracts to pass if they are going to be held liable when a loan defaults.

You have absolutely NO clue as to how closely regulated the real estate and mortgage industries are in my state ... and, I presume, in yours.

What (largely unregulated) car dealers might do their customers for sport is indeed an outrage. And their finance policies are even more criminal. That is not an industry in which I would ever want to work.

As for "hidding fees" in real estate, it simply cannot happen without a crooked title company. Every penny must be accounted for on the HUD-1 Settlement Statement, which must then be approved by the lender (in real-time) at closing before any funds are released. Everything is out in the open.

Anything that isn't disclosed, constitutes Real Estate or Mortgage Fraud -- in which case I contact our buddies at the FBI. Incidentally, most fraud is consumer-driven, from my experience.

Incidentally, there are plenty of scams make it on to the NYSE. An exchange-listed stock carries no additional me

tslippers:

Would you recomend to me, when making the bigest financuial desition in my life, that I would not need an attorney to look over the contract that I would be comited to for 5 to 30 years of my life.
As far as the NYSE, how do you get to be listed on the NYSE, is it you're desition, or do you have to be invited to be listed, and what are the requirements that have to be met before that can happen???
As for PPL, any one who is told to force the isue to sell the plan is removed from the sales end of it by consumer complaints against them, an investigation is done by the company, and is final. If you know of someone who is pushing the sale of PPL, contact PPL coustomer service and make a formal complaint.
As for PPL attorneys, every one of them are specialests in there area of law, they can have no complaints filed against them, in order to become a part of the PPL family, and they must have at least 2 years in that field before invited to be a part of PPL.
Seams we have something in common, a lack of understanding of how some things work.
Agreed???

tslippers:

What Information would you like?
If info is what you need, NO I am not trying to sell you anything, check this out and then tell me about the scam of it.
www.prepaidlegal.com
look it over with a sceptic eye, investigate it to you're hearts content.. The Attorney Gen. of Mississippi did, you know the one who went up against the tobaco indresty, AND WON!!!
He Works For PPL now....