Attorney Marc Rovner on Why a Title Attorney Sometimes Tells a Client ‘No’

Marc Evan Rovner has built a reputation, over nearly two decades running Beta Abstract, for flagging fee structures other people at the closing table are willing to let pass. Rovner is a title insurance attorney and General Counsel at the multi-state title company he helped build, and he’s direct about what that reputation has occasionally cost the firm: a referral relationship, a piece of repeat business, the kind of friction that makes colleagues ask why he bothered.

The pattern he’s flagged most often involves reverse mortgages, a product Rovner otherwise supports; his own mother took one out before she passed. His objection isn’t to the loans themselves but to fee structures that can run well above what a comparable file should cost. “I thought that the fees, which were legal, were excessive,” he says of the kind of charge he’s pushed back on. “I don’t like to see anybody be overcharged; I really don’t. We’re a volume business.”

What makes that pattern easy to miss, and easy for other people to shrug off, is that an inflated fee on a reverse mortgage doesn’t cost the borrower anything they can feel at closing. The borrower nets the amount they asked for either way. The fee simply gets added to the loan balance and compounds quietly at the loan’s interest rate until the borrower and any surviving spouse have both passed away, at which point it becomes someone else’s problem: an heir untangling a payoff statement rather than someone who could have contested the charge in real time.

That’s the distinction Rovner has been drawing at closing tables for years. In 2026, it’s the subject of active federal litigation.

Four Fees Now Under Federal Scrutiny

In January 2026, the AARP Foundation, along with the law firms Tusa P.C. and Giskan, Solotaroff & Anderson, filed a class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, the same jurisdiction where Rovner practices, against reverse mortgage servicers Celink, Finance of America Reverse, and Carrington Mortgage Services, with a related motion to add Longbridge Financial as a defendant. The complaint alleges the servicers charged Home Equity Conversion Mortgage borrowers four categories of fees that HUD rules prohibit: attorney’s fees, property inspection fees, property preservation fees, and appraisal fees.

The dollar figures in the complaint echo the kind of overcharge Rovner has objected to on individual files, just at a much larger scale. The complaint alleges one named plaintiff was charged more than $14,000 in attorney’s fees, and another was charged $17,000, against a HUD-set cap of $725 for New York foreclosure attorney’s fees. William Alvarado Rivera, AARP Foundation’s Senior Vice President of Litigation, said the fees drain the equity older borrowers are counting on to stay in their homes.

The plaintiffs bringing the case are estates, administrators, and family members handling what’s left behind after a borrower has died, the heirs Rovner has in mind when he lays out the three choices they face once a reverse mortgage comes due: convert the balance into a traditional mortgage, pay it off, or walk away, typically within a window of about thirteen months.

How an Overcharge Hides for Decades

A borrower on a traditional mortgage who gets overcharged sees it in the next bill. A reverse mortgage borrower doesn’t get a bill at all. The fee is added to the balance and accrues interest alongside the principal. It stays invisible until the loan comes due, usually after the borrower has died, when the person untangling the numbers is a grieving heir rather than someone who could have contested the charge in real time.

Rovner has been pointing at exactly this mechanism for years: the fee doesn’t touch what the borrower nets at closing, so nobody at the table has an incentive to flag it, except an attorney who has seen enough comparable files to know what one should actually cost.

What Holders and Heirs Should Do Now

Anyone signing a reverse mortgage, or handling one they’ve inherited, should start with paperwork most people don’t think to request: a full fee itemization and payoff statement from the servicer, not just a current balance. Families should also check whether their servicer is named in the AARP Foundation litigation or a related suit, while understanding that being part of a potential class doesn’t guarantee compensation. The cases remain in early, uncertified stages with no settlement reached.

Rovner’s broader advice hasn’t changed: keep every fee statement in writing, and don’t mistake a legal fee for a reasonable one. They aren’t the same thing, and the AARP Foundation’s case now puts that distinction in front of a federal court, in the same jurisdiction where Rovner has been drawing it at closing tables for years.

It’s also a reason to ask, before any closing: will this attorney tell you “no” when the numbers don’t add up, even if it costs the firm business.