Legal Solutions for You,
Your Family & Your Business

Chapter Introduction

• How Long Can You Delay the Sale of Your House?
• Judicial Foreclosures
• Nonjudicial Foreclosures
• When It May Be Worth Fighting
• You’re on Active Duty in the Military
• The Lender Didn’t Follow State Foreclosure Procedures or Mortgage Terms Governing Foreclosures
• The Foreclosing Party Can’t Prove It Owns the Mortgage
• The Mortgage Servicer Made a Serious Mistake
• The Lender Engaged in Unfair Lending Practices
• You Have a High-Cost Mortgage
• How to Fight a Foreclosure
• If You’re in a Judicial Foreclosure State
• If You Are in a Nonjudicial Foreclosure State

Whether or not a foreclosure proceeds through court (a judicial foreclosure) or bypasses court (a nonjudicial one), you have the right to raise objections to it in front of a judge.

Generally, you may have a decent shot at delaying or stopping a foreclosure if:

• the foreclosing party brought the foreclosure based on false information (for example, your payments were credited to the wrong party and you were never behind, or the lender substantially overstated the amount you had to pay to reinstate your mortgage, depriving you of your reinstatement rights under state law)
• you can prove that the foreclosing party didn’t follow state procedural requirements for bringing a foreclosure (for example, by failing to properly serve on you a notice of default required by state law)
• the foreclosing party isn’t legally entitled to bring a foreclosure action (for example, state law says that only the actual mortgage holder can foreclose on the mortgage and the foreclosing party does not meet that description), or
• the original lender or mortgage originator engaged in unfair lending practices through fraudulent behavior or by violating a state or federal law with regard to certain mortgage provisions or disclosures to borrowers.

As you’ll see, to successfully fight a foreclosure in court you will probably need to hire an attorney to represent you. The foreclosing party will have an attorney, and trying to do battle with an attorney in court when you aren’t one can be an exercise in futility. If you absolutely have to represent yourself, though, there are resources that can help you, and they’re discussed below.