Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/575

 502us2$27F 01-22-99 08:37:00 PAGES OPINPGT

Cite as: 502 U. S. 410 (1992)

417

Opinion of the Court

case before us and allow other facts to await their legal resolution on another day. We conclude that respondents’ alternative position, espoused also by the United States, although not without its difficulty, generally is the better of the several approaches. Therefore, we hold that § 506(d) does not allow petitioner to “strip down” respondents’ lien, because respondents’ claim is secured by a lien and has been fully allowed pursuant to § 502. Were we writing on a clean slate, we might be inclined to agree with petitioner that the words “allowed secured claim” must take the same meaning in § 506(d) as in § 506(a).3 But, given the ambiguity in the text, we are not convinced that Congress intended to depart from the preCode rule that liens pass through bankruptcy unaffected. 1. The practical effect of petitioner’s argument is to freeze the creditor’s secured interest at the judicially determined valuation. By this approach, the creditor would lose the benefit of any increase in the value of the property by the time of the foreclosure sale. The increase would accrue to the benefit of the debtor, a result some of the parties describe as a “windfall.” We think, however, that the creditor’s lien stays with the real property until the foreclosure. That is what was bargained for by the mortgagor and the mortgagee. The voidness language sensibly applies only to the security aspect of the lien and then only to the real deficiency in the security. Any increase over the judicially determined valuation during bankruptcy rightly accrues to the benefit of the creditor, not to the benefit of the debtor and not to the benefit of other unsecured creditors whose claims have been allowed and who had nothing to do with the mortgagor-mortgagee bargain. Such surely would be the result had the lienholder stayed aloof from the bankruptcy proceeding (subject, of course, to 3

Accordingly, we express no opinion as to whether the words “allowed secured claim” have different meaning in other provisions of the Bankruptcy Code.