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Lower Merion, PA Mortgage Foreclosure Defense Lawyer

Mortgage foreclosure is a process that can uproot your life and literally take away your home and shelter. Fighting back against creditors and working to keep your home is vital to yourself and your family if you are in dire straits and facing foreclosure.

During foreclosure proceedings, you should always have a lawyer at your side. Contacting us as soon as you can help prevent the creditors from getting one over on you. Ultimately, filing for bankruptcy might also be a great way to stop foreclosure and keep your home.

Call the foreclosure defense lawyers at Young, Marr, Mallis & Associates today at (215) 701-6519 for a free case review.

What to Do When Facing Foreclosure in Lower Merion

If your mortgage company or their collections agencies have started coming for your house and warning you about defaults and foreclosures, it is important to take a few steps to assess your situation and determine what steps to take next. Collecting the following information and making the following determinations can help our mortgage foreclosure lawyers best address your case:

Determine How Bad Your Situation is

If you are a few payments behind and going through a tight spot financially for a few months, your case might not be as bad as it appears. Our lawyers can likely assess your finances and give you some steps to take to help get your back payments under control and avoid going into default in the first place. Moving some things around financially can do wonders to help you avoid going into default on your mortgage.

If you are already in default, things might be worse. Mortgage companies are often willing to renegotiate terms, accept payment plans, restructure debts, and take other steps to keep them from having to file foreclosure proceedings against you. However, if you have already let the debt go for a long time without payment or you have been caught off guard by balloon payments or other sudden accelerations of your debt, you could have fewer options in place.

If you are already facing collections calls and have had foreclosure proceedings filed, call our lawyers right away to start fighting the foreclosure.

Gather Your Records

If you are able to get all of your financial records together, including your current debts, credit card bills, mortgage payments, student loan debt, and other records, we can look at them to help determine your financial situation. If you want to try to pay off your back debts or file for bankruptcy, knowing your current financial state will be important.

Pay What You Can

If you are in financial trouble and potentially facing foreclosure, it is important to pay what you can on your debts, both for the mortgage and for other debts. If you end up falling behind in other situations, too, it can be harder to get out of the bigger financial hole, and bankruptcy might be your only option in the end. When your only problem is your mortgage, other steps can be taken.

Stopping Foreclosure in Lower Merion, PA

There may be options to get foreclosures halted with more informal steps before needing to turn to drastic steps like bankruptcy, and our lawyers can walk you through those steps.

First, we may be able to negotiate with your mortgage holder to try to get you on a different payment plan or to get forbearance or other relief directly from them. If you otherwise have a good payment history and credit score but you have simply hit a rough patch, our lawyers might be able to convince the mortgage company not to take such drastic steps right away.

If you have plenty of equity in your home and they are going forward with foreclosure, you might have options to sell the house and pay off the debt quickly, protecting you from further collections efforts. Talk to our attorneys about this option, but note that it does still mean having to move.

In many cases where a sheriff’s sale is already happening, the best way to stop proceedings and give you time to address your financial situation is to file for bankruptcy. This is a powerful tool, as your bankruptcy petition gets you an automatic stay on all collections efforts. This includes foreclosure proceedings and sheriff’s sales, which need to stop while the bankruptcy petition moves forward.

Using Bankruptcy to Protect Your Home in Lower Merion

Bankruptcy is not the right choice for everyone, and if your financial crisis does not extend further than your mortgage, you may be better off moving or allowing the foreclosure than filing for bankruptcy just on the basis of your back mortgage payments. However, if you do have overwhelming debt and need your foreclosure stopped, bankruptcy might be right for you.

When you file, the automatic stay discussed above will stop collections and sheriff’s sales. As you discharge debt through your petition, you might also be able to get breathing room on your mortgage and recover enough to continue paying so you can keep your house.

It is important to understand what type of bankruptcy will be best for your case. In many cases, Chapter 7 bankruptcy means liquidating your assets – i.e., selling off assets like your home to cover your debts. If selling your home will actually cover your debts, this might be your best choice, but Chapter 7 is only available to people under certain income thresholds. With Chapter 13, you may be able to keep your home and restructure your debt into more manageable payments, and seizure of your home will be stalled during the months or years it takes for your case to resolve.

In any case, you should have a lawyer represent you and discuss your options with you, as filing under the wrong chapter or otherwise making mistakes in the bankruptcy process could still lose you your house.