I'm just not clear what is promissed in a 'promisory note'.
Ours was the property. The house, the lot, the driveway, and all permanment fixtures and improvements. I suppose it may not always be the case, but I suspect that this is normally the case.
In any event, you should read anything that you sign, so you can be certain of what you are promising as collateral. We signed about a million papers one morning. The several people in the room seemed a little miffed by our desire to read every document we signed--making me think that these closures usually are fifteen-minute meetings but ours went an hour and a half--but I'm a big fan of reading before signing, and my wife is even more particular. It was almost funny, at times, to catch a glimpse of the incredulous look on the faces of the real estate agent, the notary, the county official, and the banker, during the process.
In my estimation it is even more bizarre that in our culture they'd expect anything less. But the fact that they found it odd that we'd read what we sign instead of relying on their synopses just makes me realize why so many folks are in the terrible mess that they're in. ("...and this one just says that you agree to check with the association before you build a pool...", "...and this one just says that you will place your garbage can to the left of your drive way, no less than three inches from the curb and no earlier than 7 pm the night before the pickup day...", "...and this one says that you'll not put up a trailer or any kind of mobile home in the yard...", "...and this one says that you'll keep your grass no shorter than one and seven-eighths of an inch and no longer than four and one-quarter of an inch...", "...and this one says you'll only attempt to conceive children during the first four hours of the third full moon of every second year which is divisible by seventeen, provided that it falls on a monday or a thursday...").
