Legal Solutions for You,
Your Family & Your Business

Your Foreclosure Companion

No word strikes greater fear in a homeowner’s heart than foreclosure. And every day, the newspapers report unprecedented increases in foreclosures and steep decreases in home values. More and more people are behind on their mortgage payments or are about to be. It’s estimated that more than two million U.S. homeowners are now in default on their mortgages.

Fortunately, being threatened with foreclosure, or even receiving a formal foreclosure notice from the bank, doesn’t mean you’ll lose your house. You do have options.

This book will show you those options and explain the strategies you may be able to pursue to keep your house. It explains:

• the ins and outs of foreclosure procedures, with state-by-state information
• how to decide whether or not you should try to keep your house
• how you can get free help negotiating a deal with your lender to keep your house
• how filing for bankruptcy can help you keep your house, and
• how to avoid foreclosure “rescue” scams.

The book also explains how to make the most of your situation if your income and mortgage payments preclude keeping your house. It explains:

• how long you’ll be able to stay in your house—and save up money—if the foreclosure goes ahead
• how to do a short sale or deed in lieu of foreclosure if either strategy would be useful in your situation
• how to use bankruptcy to put a temporary wrench in the foreclosure gears, and
• how bankruptcy can eliminate debts and tax liabilities typically associated with foreclosure.

In my law practice, I advise people who feel swamped with debt and are considering filing for bankruptcy. As far as possible, the book mirrors the process I go through with my clients. For some of them it makes absolutely no sense to keep pouring money into a house they are destined to lose. For others, it’s completely sensible to do everything they can to keep ownership. Sometimes the reasons for these decisions are personal; sometimes they are economic.

You must make this decision for yourself—and I hope to provide some useful guidance in helping you decide, and then help you make a success of whichever strategy you decide to follow. If it’s not in the cards for you to keep your house, I can show you how to derive the greatest possible benefit from the situation—how to make really good lemonade from the lemons life has handed you, if you will.

I also hope to provide some perspective on home ownership. To sum it up, your house is not your home. (I was reminded of that fact recently by someone who’d been raised as an “army brat” who talked about her mother’s ability to recreate their home in whatever new quarters they occupied every couple of years.)

Owning the house where you live may feel like the American dream, and losing it might seem like the end of that dream. Believe me when I say that it’s not. If you are eventually forced to give up the house you are living in, painful as it may be, it’s a loss that you will recover from over time, both emotionally and financially.

But meanwhile, there is a lot you can do to restore your financial health and take control of the situation. Good luck!