Mortgages on several properties as a guarantee for a single credit: distribution of responsibility, partial cancellation and foreclosure.

Abstract

This paper tries to answer the main questions raised by those cases in which a mortgage encumbers a plurality of properties as a guarantee of a single credit, either from the moment of its constitution or as a consequence of the division or segregation of the estate after the constitution of the mortgage. The first of these concerns is the distribution of mortgage responsibility and, specifically, its mandatory or optional nature, as well as the way in which such distribution should be carried out. The second refers to the possible admissibility of the partial cancellation of the mortgage at the request of any interested party when the part of the credit that is encumbered by one of the mortgaged estates has been paid. The plurality of properties subject to a mortgage also raises some questions during the execution process, and in particular two: whether the creditor can apply for the entire debt against each and every estate or, on the contrary, must apply against each estate for the amount for which it is encumbered; and, whether in the event that the amount corresponding to one of the estates has been satisfied, the creditor can also apply against that estate. In all this, the existence or not of the distribution of the mortgage responsibility between the estates and the possible presence of third holders plays an important role. In the course of the paper, solutions are proposed to all the problems mentioned above.