Bankruptcy Indiana

For almost an entire year I kept voicing my concern. I wrote letters to the press.  I talked to colleagues and friends.  I wrote about it in these Bankruptcy in Indiana articles.  Worried about the shoddy way in which mortgage modifications were being handled by mortgage servicing companies, I wanted Congress to allow bankruptcy judges to take over the job and get it done right. That didn't happen.  Meanwhile I, along with the good bankruptcy attorneys in Indiana who are my colleagues continued our efforts to help stop foreclosure.

What we've been doing is this:

• analyzing each financial situation
   
• having skilled property appraisals run
   
• preparing debt-income ratio figures to turn into the mortgage servicing companies

The theory, of course was (as the Columbus bankruptcy lawyers remind me ruefully now), that having a skilled, experienced attorney negotiating mortgage modifications on your behalf would expedite the process. Unfortunately, in many cases, the mortgage servicers would lose the paperwork - or say they had - and we'd have to, months later, start all over again. Meanwhile, some of the "window of opportunity" to save the home from foreclosure would be closing.

Then, even more trouble surfaced, as mortgage servicers' use of "robo-signers" to push through foreclosures without proper research and paperwork came under investigation. While that caused some companies to suspend foreclosure proceedings, it kept homeowners in limbo for long periods of time. Under Chapter 13 bankruptcy laws of Indiana, clients might have been better off filing individual bankruptcy rather than going through years of delay in trying to negotiate modification of their mortgages.

Just the other day, listening to National Public Radio, I heard the story of one woman's "foreclosure nightmare" in Deerfield, New Hampshire. Rachel Keyser was actually the victim of a equity-stripping scam by a couple of her mortgage company's own employees. Keyser's mortgage payments, which she thought were being made to her lender, were actually going to the scammers.  Now, as a lawyer for bankruptcy in Indiana for so many years, I don't want to say that all mortgage servicing companies' delays have to do with scams.  The point is, Bank of America bought Countrywide, Keyser's original lender, and it's been impossible for her, in six years of misery, to get Keyser's problem straightened out. While her case is unusual in some ways, in others, it's not. 

With all the confusion going on in the mortgage servicing arena today, the fact is that for many clients, the most effective and straightforward method to help stop foreclosure and save their home is Chapter 13 bankruptcy in Indiana!