Quote:
Originally Posted by Exhibitman
Bob, it is called a "bailment": an act of delivering goods to a person for a particular purpose, without transfer of ownership to that person. The difference between a bailment and an apartment lease is that the lease gives the renter rights to the space. It is the literal opposite of a bailment: the space is delivered to the tenant. Anything in the space is presumed to be the tenant's property. A safe deposit box is the same idea: the bank gives you the space and whatever is in there is presumed yours. In the case of a bailment, unless there is a public record of the item, it is presumed to belong to the debtor and as such it goes into the general asset pot.
The vault agreements are meaningless in bankruptcy; the bankruptcy law breaks all private agreements...except perfected security interests.
The system for notifying the world that someone is holding your possessions (perfecting the interest) is the UCC filing system. It takes a minute and costs like five bucks. No reason not to do it when you are handing some ass-clown a five or six figure item.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is exactly what I wanted to hear, and hopefully have it come from you or one of your attorney colleagues here on the forum, as I myself am not an attorney. So as I surmised and was originally saying, there is definitely a difference between an apartment lease/safe deposit box rental and just sending your items to someone like a TPG or auction House to do some work/service for you.
So, my question/point is to everyone, why don't these "vault" providers actually set there service up so that in fact you are actually renting some specific space in their facility, like with a safe deposit box at your local bank? The "vault" providers charge you for keeping your items with them, why not actually call it rent, actually create specific and separate rooms/spaces/whatever for people to actually lease to then store just their items in, and set/write the "vault" agreements up that way to afford their customers further protection from potential "bailment" issues should they ever go bankrupt?
I fully understand the ease and relative nominal cost to file a UCC-1, but first off, don't you have to actually list all the items that are your property on the UCC-1 filing so the courts know exactly what is and isn't yours then, and therefore protected from a potential "bailment' issue or claim? And if so, doesn't that mean that if you set up a "vault" account and use it in on ongoing basis for continuing purchases and activity, you literally need to be constantly updating and refiling UCC-1s as you buy more items to hold in your "vault", or remove/sell things out of it, so the inventory of your actual assets is always up to date and accurate? To most people, I think they would consider having to do that nothing more than a great big PITA!!! Adam, for you with your knowledge and legal background, filing a UCC-1 is simple and quick. For the vast majority of the rest of us, it is something we've likely never done in our lives, and probably never will. We've had people on here talking about sending cards in to TPGs for grading for decades now. Want to guess an over/under number on how many of them also made sure to file a UCC-1 to protect themselves should the TPG suddenly file bankruptcy? (My suggestion would be that whatever it is, to take lower.)
So again, thank you for helping me to explain to others how they could have an issue and potentially put their property kept in a "vault" at risk if they use one of these "vault" services. And as I've said before, I've never used any "vault' service, nor seen or read any "vault" provider's user contract/operating agreement to know exactly what it says to determine if in fact what they are doing for people would be considered as a valid rental/lease, or as you stated, a "bailment".
Would also be nice to find out if one or more of the "vault" operators set their service up to be able to offer their users this extra protection, and which ones don't. That would say a lot about how much these providers really care about and look out for their customers/users. If these "vault' providers were really smart, they should be sure to intentionally set up their service as a true rental/lease, and let their users know it. And if someone is using a "vault" provider that doesn't provide the proper rental/leasing service to protect them from "bailment" issues, it may behoove them to start putting pressure on their "vault" provider to quickly change things so it does protect them and their assets, or maybe they should start looking for a new "vault" provider that does?