I find it interesting that the legislators think only the seniors need more time and in depth counseling.
So, what does this say about how they feel about seniors abilities to make sound financial decissions?

Borrower must pay their in home care provider for services provided and will not be able to pay that person the money on time, because their state increased the number of days before they can receive their money.

Borrowers have put off refilling their RX until they receive their money from the RM.

Borrowers that have a recission up on the 13th of the month, will now be charged a late charge because of the additional 7 day recession. It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but the cost of financing that late charge of $75 (as an example) at compounding interest over the years does become a big deal.

Borrowers will have to pay additional interest on their credit card balances they are paying off from the reverse mortgage, because they are being forced to wait 10 extra days for their recession to pass.

Clearly, those that drafted this regulation have no idea what it is like to be without money to pay for everyday living expenses.

Counseling issues:
First of all, discussing a borrowers budget is not helpful to RM seniors for a several reasons:
Borrowers resent the fact that some RM counselor is requiring information on their monthly income and expenses.

RM counselors are not qualified to discuss borrowers financial status. Their job is to confirm that the borrower has a clear understanding of every aspect of a RM and to review the RMC in detail (I wish they would also review the amortization, but are not required to do so)
When a counslor inquires about a budget with our borrowers that work with a FP,have their tax returns prepared by a CPA or even better are retired professionals from the financial services industry;
these borrowers have a field day with the counselor.

Second
A high percentage of today’s RM bororwers are experienced retired (some still working in their 70s) professionals and well informed about reverse mortgages. Unfortunately, the counselors have a script that is generic. We have heard from many of our borrowers that the counselors do not appear to be very familiar with anything but what is on their script and some can not even answer basic questions like: what is the difference between the monthly LIBOR index and the 1 year Treasury.

Instead of making across the board assumptions that the seniors are uneducated and uninformed and did not receive the required disclosures and explainations from their loan officer, the lawmakers should require counselors to be more educated.