Moria: Second Mortgages

One of our favourite scenes in Fellowship of the Rings is the one where the fellowship was thwarted on the mountain path and was forced to go through the mines of Moria. You could see the fear on the faces of everyone, even Gandalf. No one wanted to go through those wretched mines (maybe except for that dwarf – what’s his name – the character played by John Rhys Davies).

*********************************

In life there are areas you know you don’t want to go near. You looked in once and told yourself after that you don’t ever go there and soon you know it’s a wretched place but don’t bother with the why’s. You just don’t go there period. Soon you even struggle to remember the details; all you remember is it’s an awful place and you simply stay away.

*********************************

Like a second mortgage. You know it’s bad. You know the first mortgagee comes in first and you can’t move, can’t so much as breathe unless that first guy says so first. So when a client thinks of a second mortgage, you simply say not to think it. Stay away. Don’t ask why. Trust me. You don’t want to go there. Usually my clients listen. Well back in Malaysia they did. We never bothered with second mortgages. On the odd occasion we do, we don’t have to explain the nasty bits of such a path. We simply draw up a security sharing document and the client ranks equal. So you still end up not with a second mortgage but an equal first. We still don’t have to explain why a second mortgage is a dark smelly cave of death where ugly orcs and Belloq rules the roost. It’s one of those places you don’t go and there’s no need to ask why.

*********************************

Not unless you are one of those clients like mine in this matter I’m handling. Second mortgage please. No? Why not? What do you mean? No, tell me. My boss wants me to tell the client, in writing of course. I cannot of course just tell the client to forget it. I am no longer the trusted advisor whose word goes. I am questioned. Maybe it’s me, maybe it’s the Aussie way, but I am asked why. “Please explain”, as Pauline Hanson famously said. So I have to do some research. Actually read the Act line by line so that I could tell her in writing why Moria is to be avoided.

**********************************

Sometimes I do that, with corporate clients. I spell out line by line, of what the legal position is. I am then accused of doing nothing but regurgitating. Sometimes I am accused of not protecting ourselves enough by not pointing out, line by line, why Moria is a no-go area. I guess I have to try harder and ping the correct level of saying just enough, just right.

**********************************

I think Gandalf had to befriend the cave to get stuck into it. He left the cave in an apparent deadly fashion but of course emerged majestically from it, transfigured and morphed into a superior being. Grey to white. Elevated powers. I am about to re-enter this cave which I decided a long time ago I did not want to enter. So long ago that I no longer remember why I didn’t want to go in. Now I have to. Will I leave it in death? Will I survive, perhaps do a Gandalf and re-emerge a better and more powerful legal wizard. Yes, it’s Friday and I am I think, permitted to fantasize a bit…