When you go to a lawyer for foreclosure help, one of the first things he is likely to do is to check to find out the areas where your bank is likely to have taken you for a ride. Yes, that happens. The large banks are so completely overwhelmed by the number of defaults they have that very often, they neglect to perform due diligence – the in-depth checks, the paperwork – that they legally need to do to be completely sure that they deal fairly in all of it. Not only do they frequently make simple mistakes a lot of the time, complete and outright fraud isn’t hard to discover by either. Fraud, you ask?
Lawyers find that even when homeowners have made payments towards their homes, they can still find foreclosure documents waiting for them in the mail. What happens is the banks employ attorneys who use what they call robo-signers – employees who will just blindly sign hundreds of blank or fraudulent foreclosure legal documents each day. And then they are free to take back the house and remove the owners from their homes. Courts have taken judicial notice of these robo-signers and the practice appears to be widespread. But there are all kinds of mistakes that the banks make that may not always amount to outright fraud, even if you do always stand on the losing end. And you always need professional foreclosure help from a lawyer to help spot these.
Let’s go over some of them. Sometimes they will go in to foreclose on the home even when they have no regular paperwork done that shows that they hold title to the home. Sometimes they’ll have mortgage notes without the right kinds of endorsements on them. In one more instance of fraud, sometimes they’ll forge papers with dates on them that go earlier than they have a right to. And sometimes, to make a little extra cash, the banks will steal from homeowners by claiming to have spent legal fees that are many times what they actually paid.
There are a few things you can do without seeking professional foreclosure help though. You could check to see if the party claiming payment is the same as the party you signed up with for the mortgage. If the documents you are presented at the time of foreclosure, list the names of companies that you don’t know anything about, that’s your first clue. Things are so bad now, that the banks have finally suspended all foreclosures to put their own houses in order first. And that is something they really need to do get done.
Do not just passively sit back and allow the bank to take your house. Free legal aid may be available from your local bar association.