Cornered into Foreclosure? How You Can Still Save Your Home
Sometimes situations in life are never what you expected them to be. When you lose your job, and it is all you have done for twenty years or more, it is difficult to get a job doing anything else. As such, your savings, if any, are immediately consumed by monthly bills and living expenses. After that, you are stuck trying to find a way just to keep your home.
Cornered into a foreclosure, you might be tempted to let it go since there is nothing you can do- or is there? Actually there is something you can do. Foreclosure defense via a bankruptcy attorney is a real thing. Here is what it looks like.
Hire a Bankruptcy Lawyer
The first thing you should do is hire a bankrutpcy lawyer. Filing for bankruptcy delays creditors from pursuing you, including mortgage lenders. If you have enough debt to file for a personal bankruptcy, you can begin this process. The Chapter 7 eliminates most debt, while the Chapter 13 allows you to keep major assets, like your home, with a debt restructuring plan.
Let the Lawyer Know You Want to Keep Your House
By filing the Chapter 7, you are stating that you are unable to meet your monthly bills with your current "income," which at the present time is nothing. Filing the Chapter 13 tells all involved creditors that you want to keep your home. This helps delay payments, hopefully, until you can find a new job. Let your lawyer know that it is your intent to keep your home, and not liquidate it to pay debts. This can be written into the filing. Your mortgage lender, as well as the rest of your creditors are then put on notice that you intend to keep your home while trying to discharge all of your other debts.
Show Some Effort with Job Hunting
Until your hearing date, make every effort to find a job. Record every interview you had, every resource you used to find work, and any refusal letters or emails you receive from companies that choose not to hire you. These logs show that you are trying, and have tried, to find work to prevent this predicament. It is proof that you are serious about keeping your home, but you are backed into a corner with employment issues. Give your lawyer the job hunt records and documents a few days prior to the bankruptcy hearing so that your lawyer has time to look them over and prepare your foreclosure defense.