Three Business Days, Printed Wrong
A refinance signing on Thursday at 6:00 p.m. The package includes two copies of the Notice of Right to Cancel for the borrower plus an additional copy for his records. The printed cancellation deadline on all three is the following Saturday, and the lender's funding condition states that the rescission period must run. The borrower asks whether he can sign only the Note tonight and handle the rest after the weekend. Later he mentions he is leaving town tomorrow and asks whether he can cancel by email on Sunday, since 'the form says Saturday and I'll be gone.'
1. Is the printed Saturday deadline correct? What do you do about it?
Read the worked answer
No. For rescission purposes a business day is every calendar day except Sundays and federal holidays. Counting from a Thursday consummation: Friday is day one, Saturday is day two, Sunday is excluded, Monday is day three. The right expires at midnight on Monday, not Saturday.
A deadline printed too early shortens the borrower's statutory cancellation window, which is a disclosure problem, not a clerical one. Your move:
- Do not correct, initial, or white out dates on a federally required disclosure. That is not a signing agent function.
- Stop and escalate to the title company and the lender before the borrower signs, describe the discrepancy precisely, and follow their written instruction - usually a corrected package or a re-draw.
- Do not reassure him that Saturday is 'close enough.' If he relies on it and the notice is wrong, the error compounds.
Note the discrepancy in your signing report either way.
2. The borrower wants to sign the Note now and 'do the rest after the weekend,' and asks about emailing a cancellation on Sunday. What do you tell him?
Read the worked answer
On partial signing: you cannot advise him to sign or not sign, and you cannot engineer a workaround. Signing the Note alone does not close the loan and does not start rescission in any meaningful way - the borrower's disclosures and security instrument are part of one consummation. Report that he declined to sign the full package and let the lender and title decide how to proceed.
On cancellation: the right belongs to him, not to you, and you neither accept nor refuse a cancellation. The notice tells him how to deliver it - typically mail, telegram, or written communication per the form, with delivery by midnight of the deadline. Whether email counts depends on the form and state law; tell him to read the delivery instructions on his own copy and to call the lender with questions.
Do not tell him Saturday is his deadline given the printed error. Escalate first.