Blue Bee Bankruptcy Law is experienced in offering successful strategies—both bankruptcy and non-bankruptcy—for fighting your foreclosure.

Likewise, our skilled team has defended hundreds of homeowners in state court foreclosure cases or wrongful foreclosures and mortgage fraud cases.

As a debt relief agency, we file bankruptcy for thousands of people in federal bankruptcy court to avoid foreclosure.

“What Are My Options When My Utah Home Is in Foreclosure?”

You have three options:

  1. If you feel that you are the victim of a wrongful foreclosure, you can fight the mortgage company. We have been fighting mortgage companies since 1994, and our lawyers are nationally recognized as a leader in foreclosure litigation and bankruptcy.
  2. If you know you got behind, but you want to save your home, you can file a bankruptcy, which will give you two different ways to protect your home. You can attempt to modify your mortgage by compelling the lender to participate in mediation, or you can bring your delinquent mortgage current through a 5-year Chapter 13 Plan of Reorganization.
  3. If you don’t want to keep the house, you may be able to short sell your property and avoid bankruptcy and foreclosure. Often, we can negotiate enough time with the bank to allow you to market and sell your Utah property. Usually, the banks will agree to waive the difference between what you owe and the sale price of your home. There still may be tax consequences, so talk to us before you short sell.

“Can I Fight My Mortgage Company for Wrongful Foreclosure?”

The law requires that your mortgage servicer only initiate its foreclosure process if it has met all the necessary conditions of Utah statutes.

A foreclosure is wrongful if the following elements are NOT met:

  1. The homeowner was behind in mortgage payments at the time the servicer initiated the foreclosure process.

This element may seem obvious, but many homeowners assert they were current at the time the foreclosure process began. Sometimes, the mortgage company refuses to accept payments or illegally places payments into a “suspense account.” The servicer may have offered an emergency forbearance and then demanded that the skipped payments be made all at once.

  1. The mortgage company did everything it was legally and contractually required to do before initiating the foreclosure process.

Mortgage servicers fail to perform all “conditions precedent” to initiating a foreclosure. For instance, FHA and VA require mortgage servicers to perform precise loss-mitigation services to homeowners before placing them in foreclosure. Not surprisingly, these services are often not provided.

  1. The plaintiff has the standing to commence the foreclosure process.

Originators frequently sell ownership of residential mortgage loans to other entities. Sometimes the buyer is a trust, known as mortgage-backed security. In the past, mortgage companies were notorious for bringing foreclosure actions before they legally owned the loan. This practice still occurs today, but mortgage companies are better at concealing their activities. Furthermore, judges have become numb to the shoddy legal work performed by the foreclosure law firms.

Each mortgage foreclosure presents different factual scenarios which require careful legal analysis by our foreclosure lawyers.

The wrongful foreclosure and mortgage fraud lawyers of Blue Bee Bankruptcy are happy to analyze your foreclosure paperwork to determine what possible defenses exist for fighting your foreclosure.

“Can I Save My Home without Filing Bankruptcy?”

Yes, you can attempt to modify your mortgage directly with the mortgage servicer outside of bankruptcy court.

However, the success rate for modifying a mortgage is dismally low.

Likewise, mortgage servicers often engage in “extend and pretend” strategies to distract homeowners in foreclosure.

For example. your servicer may reach out to you while in foreclosure to offer you “loss mitigation options,” like a mortgage modification.

If you have been through this process with your servicer, you know how exasperating it is.

Doesn’t it feel like your servicer is just creating a convoluted path for you and waiting for you to misstep?

You know they want to say, “We tried to give you a modification, but you screwed it up. It’s your fault!”

Has your servicer denied receiving the paperwork and documentation you have sent to them more than once? Has your servicer informed you that your modification packet was incomplete or incorrectly completed?

You are not alone.

Wrongful foreclosures and mortgage fraud is common, and servicer’s can use these tactics for wearing down honest homeowners just trying to get back on track.

So, more often than not, homeowners fail to modify their mortgages without the assistance of an experienced lawyer.

The foreclosure lawyers at Blue Bee Bankruptcy can handle your mortgage modification outside of bankruptcy court.

While the success rate is lower than mortgage modifications in bankruptcy, we have successfully modified many mortgages outside of bankruptcy.

“How Does Bankruptcy Help Me Save My Home?”

There are two ways you can attempt to bring your mortgage current in bankruptcy court.

Mortgage Modification

The first bankruptcy option is seeking a modification through court-ordered mediation. In either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, the bankruptcy judge can order the parties to participate in mediation, and that order imposes a duty to mediate in good faith. While this does not ensure your mortgage company will agree to modify your loan, it does ensure that it will at least reasonably consider the modification.

The modification lawyers at Blue Bee Bankruptcy Law have experienced a much higher modification success rate inside the bankruptcy system than inside the state court system. The Bankruptcy Code, which is governed by federal law, provides mechanisms which compel lenders to act more reasonably in mortgage modifications.

Chapter 13 Repayment

The second bankruptcy option is a Chapter 13 repayment plan. Again, the automatic stay freezes the foreclosure case, and the homeowner is given 60 months (5 years) to bring the mortgage delinquency current.

The experienced bankruptcy lawyers of Blue Bee Bankruptcy use various techniques and strategies when crafting Chapter 13 plans to make them as affordable as possible. For instance, we modify the length and interest rate of your car loan, which often lowers the monthly payment. You can apply the monthly savings to your mortgage arrearage. We frequently craft plans with payments that are not much greater than your original monthly secured debt obligations.

“What If I Don’t Want to Save My Home?”

Sometimes walking away from your home is the best option available to you.

While this is never an easy decision to make, we will guide you in every step of the way to ensure you have exhausted all available option before deciding to leave your home.

The foreclosure lawyers of Blue Bee Bankruptcy can help you minimize the financial liability and credit damage of a foreclosure.

We often defend foreclosure cases with the primary objective of buying enough time to get the property sold at a short sale.

A successful short sale means no foreclosure will appear on your credit.

The short sale will often allow you to buy another home in just a couple of years.

The key to a successful short sale is to obtain a waiver of deficiency from the lender. Without this waiver, the lender can sue a homeowner for the difference between the short sale price and the amount left owing on the promissory note.

If the lender refuses to grant a deficiency waiver, a homeowner may determine the best course of action is to avoid the deficiency by filing bankruptcy.

The bankruptcy lawyers of Blue Bee Bankruptcy have filed Chapter 13 bankruptcies for the sole purpose of avoiding these potentially massive deficiencies.

Even homeowners with large incomes and high net worth frequently file bankruptcy for this purpose without losing any assets or income.

Dealing with Wrongful Foreclosures

There are many ways to deal with wrongful foreclosure successfully.

We will expertly handle your case in the manner which best suits your individual needs. Contact us today.

Rebuild Your Life After Bankruptcy
Get FREE information on rebuilding your credit.
Start Today