Northern California Bankruptcy Lawyer

On The Bankruptcy Soapbox

The Soap Box

We Live In An Economic House Of Cards

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I’ve long said to bankruptcy clients that bankruptcy can’t fix an income problem, it can just ameliorate an outgo problem.

In the last round of frantic bankruptcy filings a decade ago, one symptom seemed to be that too many families in the Silicon Valley  couldn’t really afford to live a middle class life here.

They filled the gap between economic realities and their expectations with credit cards until the house of cards came tumbling down.  I could provide the tourniquet that staunched the credit card outflow.

But it seems the problem of struggling families isn’t just an outgo problem: it’s income based and it’s everywhere, not just California.

A United Way study,  released last week, shows 43% of American households can’t afford a bare bones budget.  That’s 51 million households that can’t afford the basics of food, rent, child care, transportation, health care and a cell phone.

Even with reportedly low unemployment, the income generated falls short for a huge swath of our populace.  The people the United Way set out to study were those they dubbed ALICE:  Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed.

What they found calls out for national attention and a reordering that keeps all of our families self sufficient.

My skill-set in bankruptcy is no match for people on the edge of destitution.

 

 

The Bankruptcy Problem Your Lawyer Can’t Fix

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ThreatThe problem even the best bankruptcy lawyer can’t fix is the one you hide.

Sometimes  it’s a problem you don’t want to face yourself, or a debt your spouse doesn’t know about.

Maybe it’s a claim you hope to bring after the bankruptcy.

You’re tempted just to say nothing to your bankruptcy lawyer.  Who will know?

Think again.

When the truth is threatening

You’ve probably heard lots of the myths about bankruptcy floating around.

Then there are the stories from people who knew someone whose friend’s cousin  filed bankruptcy some time back.

He didn’t tell everything and it worked out.

Maybe or maybe not.

People visiting a bankruptcy lawyer for the first time often are tempted to conceal debts, property, or transactions from their lawyer in the belief that if the lawyer had the facts, they would be barred from bankruptcy relief. That is seldom so.

Your lawyer can’t protect you from problems created by secrets you keep. With all the facts, your lawyer can provide meaningful advice that maximizes the relief available in bankruptcy.

Hide your secret from your bankruptcy lawyer and you may have a problem far bigger than the one you’re trying to hide.

Full disclosure is the price of relief

Bankruptcy is grounded in full disclosure to the court and creditors.  In exchange for transparency about your finances, you get a discharge of your dischargeable debts.

More importantly, your bankruptcy papers are signed under penalty of perjury.  Get caught in a deliberate lie and you may lose the opportunity for a discharge of all of your current debts.  One of the grounds for denial of discharge is “false oath”.

Perjury is a federal crime.  You could find yourself the guest of Uncle Sam for up to five years.

The time-worn saying in bankruptcy is that it’s the X’s that will get you:  the ex-spouse, the ex-partner, or the ex-friend.

Those folks may have a motive to call you out in court.

The trustee has a right to examine your tax returns, your bank statements, and your check register.

Secrets are hard to keep.

Get your money’s worth from your lawyer

Usually the things people hope to keep from me are penny-ante things.  When it is disclosed, I often find that what the client was worrying about  isn’t really a worry at all.

When the secret does present a complication, we can look for a work around:

  • undoing the transfer,
  • filing Chapter 13,
  • waiting to file til the secret is no longer a problem.

But I can’t fix things I don’t know about.

Start by making full disclosure to your bankruptcy lawyer. Your lawyer is on your side.

Image courtesy of Sandilya Theuerkauf and Wikimedia.

Does Discharged Debt Stay Gone Forever?

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Can my old debt come back after my bankruptcy?

Worried clients ask me this all the time, fearful that the relief they get from their creditors in bankruptcy is only temporary.

The short answer is no.

Debt that is discharged, wiped out, in your bankruptcy case is gone as a legal liability forever.

The automatic stay that stops collectors when you file bankruptcy is replaced, at the end of the case, with the discharge injunction.

But then, this is law, so nothing is quite that simple.

Personal liability

The bankruptcy discharge eliminates your personal liability for dischargeable debts.

If there is no personal liability, your former creditor can’t sue you for money and get a judgment that allows it to levy your assets or garnish your wages.

Was the debt discharged

Bankruptcy law carves out some debts that aren’t discharged in bankruptcy. Debts must be listed in your bankruptcy schedules to be discharged.  But, just because they are listed doesn’t mean they necessarily go away.

Debts that can’t be discharged include

  • child support,
  • recent taxes,
  • judgments for personal injury caused by drunk driving.

Unfortunately, the discharge order that is issued by the court at the end of a bankruptcy case doesn’t list the debts that are discharged.  It just says that the dischargeable debts are gone.

More on what debts were discharged

Is there a lien

The bankruptcy discharge wipes out the personal liability for a debt.  But liens that have attached to assets before the bankruptcy remain as a charge against those assets.

Perfected liens represent an interest in property, a claim to a piece of what you own.

The lien survives the bankruptcy.  The lien is only a claim on what you owned when the bankruptcy was filed.  It doesn’t attach to assets you acquire after bankruptcy.

A lien survives unless you get a bankruptcy court order that avoids the lien because it impairs an exemption you claimed in the bankruptcy case.

You need to file a motion to make that avoidance happen.  Which means you need to tell your bankruptcy lawyer that your creditor may have gotten a judgment and a judgment lien before your bankruptcy case was filed.

Does the creditor know you got a discharge

The reason that the bankruptcy paperwork requires that you list all your creditors with good mailing addresses is so they get the word when your discharge is entered.  Notice to creditors is also about due process:  remember from civics?

Creditors get notice so they can participate in the bankruptcy if there were to be a payment to creditors and so they can protest if they have grounds to think you shouldn’t get a discharge.

Once you get a discharge, the court mails a copy of the court’s order to everyone on the list of creditors you assembled at the beginning of the case.

A creditor left off the list, or to whom a debt is transferred after the bankruptcy filing, has no way of knowing that you’ve discharged your debts.

Notice of the bankruptcy isn’t everything

While the Bankruptcy Code says creditors who didn’t get notice of the bankruptcy case have a continuing claim against a debtor, courts have hedged that part of the law.

In the 9th Circuit, which includes California, a creditor with a straightforward dischargeable claim has that claim discharged even without notice, where the bankruptcy case provided no distribution to creditors.  That’s the holding of Beezley.

Note then that in a no asset Chapter 7, where no creditor gets any money as a result of the bankruptcy, a creditor without notice gets wiped out.

But in Chapter 13, where there might be a tiny distribution to unsecured creditors, the creditor without notice keeps his claim.

So, the rule is:  the debtor’s personal liability for a dischargeable claim is wiped out forever, if the creditor got notice or if there was no payment to creditors in the case.

Next time we’ll address what to do when you are contacted about a claim that has been discharged.

More

When creditors call after bankruptcy

Liens after bankruptcy

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

The Kind of Person Who Files Bankruptcy

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who files bankruptcyThis is last place I ever expected to be, says the client sitting in my bankruptcy office.  I hear that probably twice a week.

Or, the client assures me:  I’m not the kind of person who doesn’t pay their debts.

My clients seem to think that only someone who is different or defective has trouble paying their bills.  Not so at all.

Who IS the kind of person who files bankruptcy?

It just happens that Leslie Linfield has assembled a composite picture of  the “kind of person” who filed bankruptcy last year.

Leslie should know:  she heads the Institute for Financial Literacy.

The typical bankruptcy filer

White, married couples in their mid to late 40″s, college educated and  both working are the “kind” of people who file bankruptcy.

Doesn’t sound very different or distinctive, does it?

Most of them find themselves in bankruptcy by reason of a loss of income.  Even if both are once again working, their income is now less and it’s not enough to pay the accumulated debts.

Trends

Over the past decade, the average age of  those filing bankruptcy has risen as more seniors file bankruptcy.  Many have carried consumer debt  and substantial mortgage payments into retirement  and find they can’t make it.

In my Bay Area  practice, over the past three years not only am I seeing more people who are 60 plus, I’m seeing more people whose last job paid $150,000 or more.

Now, they are either unemployed, or back to work after an episode of unemployment  at far lower pay.  Investments in real estate that were expected to provide supplemental income crashed.  Expenditures that were manageable and appropriate at higher incomes couldn’t be sustained with a drop in pay.

I am also seeing lots of small business owners, some with businesses that have survived for years, only to go down in the Great Recession.

The face of bankruptcy

In the past week, my new bankruptcy clients have included:

  • a 50’s entrepreneur with a well established business floundering  under credit card debt that financed operations
  • a young couple walking away from a house that is grossly under water
  • a retired couple whose start up didn’t
  • a 50 ish couple, housing their adult children and their kids, on half the prior income
  • two couples who invested in out of state rentals before the crash
What kind of people file bankruptcy?  All kinds, as you can see.
Or maybe it’s only those who are smart enough to see that bankruptcy offers a way out of an impossible situation and clears the decks for a better financial life.

More about the decision to file bankruptcy

What factors should you look at when considering bankruptcy?

You don’t need bankruptcy if….

Debt settlement as an alternative

Image courtey of giuliamara

 

 

What Kenny Rogers Teaches Us About Getting Out of Debt

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You’ve got to know when to hold ’em,

know when to fold ’em;

know when to walk away,

know when to run...

So goes the gambler’s advice to the young card player in the hit Kenny Rogers song.

Hum along as we think about how we play our cards when we’re in debt: the hardest call is to know when to fold and file for bankruptcy.

Do you play a bad hand

With few exceptions, everyone wants to repay the debts they consider legitimate.

  • Paying your debts fits our self image and our values.We make heroes of  people who’ve scrimped, worked two jobs, gone without, to pay their debts in full.
  • Congress in 2005 made much of taking “personal responsibility” for your debts.  The pro creditor Congressmen cast bankruptcy as the choice of those unwilling to shoulder the consequences of their actions.
  • Those peddling credit shout that bankruptcy will cripple you in the credit market til the end of time.

If you’re in debt, it’s hard to know how sort your choices and to know which to discard and which to hold on to.

No one talks about the big picture cost of that strategy.

No one talks about those whose bull headed commitment to payment blinded them to other needs and other financial threats.

No one talks about those who sacrifice and still fail to pay their way out of debt.

No one talks about debt-ridden elders with no hope of better times ahead.

So how do you assess your cards, so to speak, when choosing between get out of debt strategies?

Just like playing cards, the decision to commit to paying off your debts depends on the relationships between the cards you hold. It’s the relationship between the factors that are important, not hard and fast rules.  Let’s look at the factors. [Read more…]

Wage Garnishment Survival Guide

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Gavel and money in wallet isolated on white“Your wages have been garnished, ” reads the letter from your employer.

Do nothing and twenty-five percent of your after tax earnings will be sent to your judgment creditor.

So, do something:  keep reading this action guide for Californians subject to a wage garnishment.

This guide has three parts:

  • the short run guide for minimizing the hit to your income,
  • the medium range attack on the judgment, and
  • the long run look at the bigger picture of your personal finances.

Wage garnishment explained

A wage garnishment is a legal order that a creditor with a judgment against you can obtain from the court to collect on its judgment.

10 things you need to know about judgments

The existence of a judgment means that a court has already issued its order finding that your creditor is entitled to a sum of money from you to satisfy a debt.

If the system has worked as it’s supposed to, you should have been served with a copy of the complaint when it was filed.

Due process requires that before a judgment is entered, you get notice of the lawsuit and a chance to defend against it. Increasingly, these days, that doesn’t happen as it is supposed to.  More about that in our discussion of medium range survival tactics.

California is among the majority of states that allow a judgment creditor to intercept your wages at the source, your employer, to collect on its judgment.  Both federal law and state law impose a cap on how much of each paycheck the creditor gets.  State law can protect more than the federal law does;  it can’t protect less.

Here, we are looking at the garden-variety judgment for credit card debt or medical bills.  There are different rules governing collection of taxes and support that we won’t deal with today.

1.  Protect Your Paycheck From Garnishment

The wage garnishment entitles the judgment creditor to 25% of your paycheck, after mandatory deductions are subtracted.  But that’s the maximum the creditor gets.

You get a chance to show that you need more than 75% of your earnings to support yourself and your dependents. Cal. C. of Civil Procedure 706.051.

But to exercise that chance, you’ve got to fill out a form.  Are you game for that?

Claim exempt funds for support

With the notice of garnishment, you should have been served with a form to claim the exemption for money necessary for support.  To claim the exemption in wages, you need to also complete the form financial statement.

Note that the financial statement asks for your monthly income.  That’s easy if you are paid once a month, or twice a month. Watch out, though, if you are paid weekly or every two weeks.  There are 4.3 weeks in a month.  Figure your weekly income, then multiply by 4.3.

The claim of exemption and the financial statement get sent to the levying officer, not the court, and not your employer.  That information is shown on the notice of levy.    The back of the notice form has instructions for the judgment debtor; read them carefully.

Creditor can agree to allow exemption

The levying officer delivers your claim of exemption to the judgment creditor, who can accept your claim of exemption, or can request a hearing before a judge.

If a hearing is required, you will get a completed copy of the notice with the time and place of the hearing.  It will look like this.

If there will be a hearing, you need to appear, with evidence in hand about other sources of income, if any; proof of your expenses; and any other documents that support your need for all or nearly all of your wages.

You can also negotiate directly with your creditor for some alternative way to pay the judgment.

2.  Attack The Judgment

Wage garnishment is available only if a court has properly determined that you owe the money in question.

If you participated in the lawsuit, lost, and didn’t appeal, the matter is closed.  It’s a done deal.

But if the judgment supporting the wage garnishment was news to you, if it was entered because you didn’t appear in the suit, you may have a chance to fight back.

California law allows you to move to set aside a judgment that was improperly entered.  “Proper” here refers to the procedures involved, not the merits of the claim.

Grounds to set aside a default judgment include excusable neglect, lack of actual notice, or lack of subject matter jurisdiction.

Setting aside a judgment requires an understanding of the issue, attention to detail, and prompt action.  Sit on your hands and you may be barred from available relief because you waited too long.

The Sacramento County Public Law Library has a great guide to setting aside judgments.  If doing it yourself looks too difficult, a lawyer can help you.

Setting aside the judgment is probably only worth the effort if you have a defense to the substance of the lawsuit.  It’s a lot of work if at the end of the day, you are still liable for the debt.

3.  Assess Your Finances As A Whole

Your time and energy are precious commodities and come in limited supply.  Before spending a passel of time and energy defending yourself from this judgment creditor, take a look at all your financial obligations.

Ask yourself: Will managing this debt leave me able to pay everyone else I owe money to?

If not, get some help looking at the big picture.  Reputable credit counselors can help you with alternative payment plans.

I don’t recommend debt settlement schemes, however.  The concept is appealing, but in practice, it seldom works to solve the entire problem.

Bankruptcy lawyers are experienced in looking at debts and assessing whether you can dig yourself out of a financial hole without the help of available bankruptcy laws.  A bankruptcy filing stops a wage garnishment and usually eliminates your liability for the debt for all time.

Read more about bankruptcy and the alternatives.

 

Image:  © Africa Studio – Fotolia.com

Divorce And The Ticking Debt Bomb

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Debts of the marriage often outlive the marriage itself.

Yet left-over debts are nothing but trouble.

But too often, divorcing couples don’t mop up the joint debts they held during the marriage, and the situation blows up years later when one ex-spouse hits financial trouble.

Joint account remained open after divorce

It’s playing out in a bankruptcy case I have now:

  • divorce final for decades.
  • no balance on joint line of credit when the spouses divorced
  • no one closed the account

When one spouse hit a rough patch, she accessed the left-over line of credit, big time.  But it wasn’t enough to avoid the need for bankruptcy.

My client’s financial mess threatens to slop over to the former spouse who remained listed on a dormant line of credit.

Even though the current debt is long after the divorce, the ex spouse remains liable to the lender because his name is on the account.

During the marriage, the community would have gotten the benefit of the community property discharge.  Not so after divorce, when there is no community.

What is discharged on joint debt

My client can discharge the debt to the lender, but not the debt to the long-since ex spouse.  That’s because obligations between spouses, such as the division of debt, can’t be discharged in Chapter 7

Unpaid support in bankruptcy

I see a couple of possible outcomes in my case:

  • The indemnification clause in the divorce agreement will require my client to make the ex whole.
  • The other spouse’s reported efforts to close the account will serve to insulate him from the debt.
  • In the face of the bankruptcy, the lender will not pursue the uninvolved ex.

It’s early days on this particular episode.  But the broader lesson is clear:  clean up all joint financial matters during the divorce.

Every joint obligation left for untangling later is a ticking time bomb.  Leaving a refinance, a property transfer, or a joint account for “later” exposes one ex spouse to the debts and financial travails of the other.

Former spouses got a big bump in their protections from consequences of bankruptcy filings by their ex’s in the bankruptcy “reform” act of 2005.  Now, no debt created by a divorce is dischargeable in a  Chapter 7.

So the obligations created by an agreement to indemnify or hold harmless the other spouse from debts will survive Chapter 7.

But the value of that indemnification right may be questionable if the person required to protect the other former spouse has just gone through bankruptcy.  If the protected spouse has to pay the lender, the only remedy is to sue the ex, who just went through bankruptcy.

So, clean up the debt situation in the divorce, just as throughly as you divide the assets.

Image courtesy of Fort Meade.

When Bankruptcy Lawyers Get The Basics Wrong

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The Lawyers Have Bankruptcy Wrong?I cringe when a client says that they’ve researched bankruptcy on the internet before making an appointment with me.

For every sound, balanced, nuanced article on consumers and their debts, there are bunches of sloppy, inaccurate sites, often trying to make bankruptcy so frightening that you’ll buy whatever they’re selling.

But when a group of bankruptcy lawyers, trying, I’d assume, to provide useful information on bankruptcy get it so wrong, I’m perplexed.

Bankruptcy Home, which identifies itself as a group advertising site for bankruptcy lawyers, has community property absolutely wrong.  At least California community property, which is all I’m licensed to deal with.

When one spouse in a community property state files bankruptcy, the site says, the debtor must include the value of one half of the community property.  Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I don’t know whether these lawyers haven’t read the bankruptcy code or haven’t read the site that they pay for.  Neither alternative is flattering to them.

All Community Property Comes In

Here’s what  section 541 of the bankruptcy code says:

 (a) The commencement of a case …creates an estate. Such estate is comprised of all the following property…

(2) All interests of the debtor and the debtor’s spouse in community property as of the commencement of the case that is—

 (A) under the sole, equal, or joint management and control of the debtor; or
(B) liable for an allowable claim against the debtor, or for both an allowable claim against the debtor and an allowable claim against the debtor’s spouse, to the extent that such interest is so liable.
So, while the spouses may each get one half of the community property upon divorce, in bankruptcy, all of the community property comes into the estate.
In exchange for bringing all of the community property into the bankruptcy estate, all of the prefiling community claims are discharged and the non filing spouse’s interest in future community property is protected from pre filing community claims.  We call that the community property discharge.
I know it’s complex, but the complexity of community property doesn’t lie in what comes into the estate, as stated by Bankruptcy Home.  To be credible, bankruptcy lawyers need to get the basics right, and to acknowledge that there are  further complexities.
I first wrote this piece in 2012.  I checked the Bankruptcy Home site before republishing this post. That site remains uncorrected.

Image courtesy of Tambako the Jaguar.

I’m Done Talking About Importance of Retirement Savings

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retirement planning

Shedding debt so you can save for retirement is the most compelling reason to file bankruptcy in my book.

Get rid of the debt that’s dischargeable so you can fund your retirement, I exhort.

Between the crippling cost of housing in the Bay Area and parent loans for college, there is so little margin for discretionary spending that I begrudge every dollar my clients spend on credit card debt.

I cringe when I see families paying American Express instead of their IRA.  I acknowledge the reality of the obligation to the credit card folks.  But the consequences of not paying are vastly different for an individual than they are for credit card issuers.

American Express, and every other consumer lender, built into its pricing model the fact that not everyone who borrowed money on their plastic card would repay.  They still make money whether you pay off your card or not.

American Express doesn’t have to retire, and you do.

With few exceptions, every client I meet without an employer funded or sponsored retirement program has only pennies set aside for retirement.

All that said, when I ask about what the client has saved for retirement, I’m met with one of two retorts:

My house is my retirement is one, superficially convincing in the land of runaway home values.  (Houses don’t make good retirement plans, however.)

But the second is:  I don’t plan to ever retire.

Sometimes the “I won’t retire” is an acknowledgment that they can’t support themselves without a job.  Other times, they are indulging in magical thinking that they will always be capable and valuable to an employer.

The facts of aging, of course, are different.  We’re living longer, markedly longer.  Dementia is on the rise.  The average Social Security check is around $1300.

No more pretty talk

old ageSo, I’ve had it with serving up polite talk about “retirement.”  In this era of blunt speaking, let’s take off the gloves:

My question to clients henceforth is “how are you going to pay for old age?’

We can dance around whether we’re ever going to “retire”; but presumably, we’d all like a long stretch before we die.

And that long stretch requires funds if old age is going to be comfortable.

So, my mantra going forward is discussion of funding old age.

The ugly truth is that savings for old age requires discipline and some degree of self denial.  And many of my clients demonstrate enormous amounts of discipline in making minimum payments and keeping all the financial balls in the air.

Yet none of that discipline is exerted to provide for their old age.

The images of impoverished elders are not pretty.  Don’t find yourself supplying another heartbreaking picture of failure to plan for old age.

 

 

 

 

 

5 Basics You Need To Know About Your Mortgage Payments

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mortgage debt

Figuring out what you owe on your home loan can be harder than a calculus exam.

For most people, their mortgage is their biggest debt.  And their home is their most important asset.

Yet, the people accounting for your payments are increasingly incapable of the very basics of their job.

Things have changed since the local bank made you a loan to buy a house and collected the payments you made on that loan.

Now, home loans get sold to someone else the moment the deal closes.  The right to collect the loan payments is bought and sold separately from the right to the payment amount.

And increasingly, the servicers make mistakes as they cut  corners to make a buck.

What do you need to know to assess whether your loan servicer has got the numbers right?

1.  Principal balance isn’t what you owe

Ask someone what they owe on their mortgage and they’ll recite the principal balance.  The principal balance is the remaining part of the amount originally borrowed that is still unpaid.

Yet you may well owe additional sums:  delinquent payments that are mostly interest;  late fees;  escrow advances; or the junk fees that most delinquent loans are larded with.

Finding the principal balance gets trickier yet if the loan has been modified to include a non-interest bearing amount or some other, non standard adjustment.

So the amount necessary to pay off the loan upon sale, or refinance, may well include charges from the past plus fees for calculating what you need to pay to satisfy the debt.

2.  Payments are credited to oldest month unpaid

If you fall behind on a home loan, then resume making payments, your payment is credited to the oldest month still unpaid.

So the payment you make in June may be credited to February.

And the servicer will report that you remain due for June, even though you sent a check in June.  It’s all in the rules about how payments are credited under the terms of the note.

3.  Payments may not be credited

Loan servicers seem to have a separate “pocket” labeled “Suspense”  into which they sometimes dump your payment. They’ve got your money, they just haven’t credited it to the amount you owe.

The only reason for putting funds in suspense that seems justified is when the payment is too little to make a full payment on the loan.  Servicers don’t have to credit partial payments.

So, they put the money in suspense until they receive enough money to make the regular payment.

For reasons no servicer has ever adequately explained, I’ve seen suspense accounts in the tens or even a hundred thousand dollars.

So, a mortgage statement that doesn’t address any funds held in suspense doesn’t tell the whole story.

4.  Escrow accounts contain something extra

If your property taxes and hazard insurance are paid by the lender, you have an escrow account.

Under federal law, the lender is allowed to collect more than the sum of the year’s taxes and insurance as protection against the borrower’s non payment.

The extra money, the “cushion”, can be no more than 1/6 th of the annual expenditures.  It remains your money, it’s just held by the servicer should it have to pay when you haven’t paid.

You should get an annual escrow analysis that shows income and expenses in the past year’s escrow account and a projection of the coming year’s expenses.

That projection will determine what you pay in escrow payments going forward.

5.  Statement doesn’t come from owner of note

Ever since loans were bundled up and sold on Wall Street to investment trusts, the work of collecting your payments has been handed off to loan “servicers”.

The owner of the note pays a company to deposit your payments, keep track of fees and expenses, and take action if you don’t pay.

The servicer seldom owns the note, they just own the right to collect the money.

And servicers change.  Sometimes as often as we change the oil in our car.

When there’s a loan handoff from one servicer to a new servicer, details about anything unusual in the loan account sometimes get lost.

Get behind the monthly statement

The problem of finding out what the servicer thinks you owe became such a problem that regulations written pursuant to the Dodd-Frank act gave borrowers some clout.

Now, a borrower with a home loan can make a Request For Information about their loan and expect answers within a shorter period than under the old law.

If the servicing of the loan has changed hands, the borrower has a window in which to request information from the old servicer, to compare with what the new servicer thinks.

Find the “how-to” for a Request for Information.

More

Your mortgage and your credit report after Chapter 13

Bad mortgage accounting violates your Chapter 13 discharge

Get tax credit for curing mortgage defaults in Chapter 13

How Chapter 13 works

 

 

 

 

 

1674 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Suite 140
Mountain View, CA 94043
Phone: (650) 694-4700

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