Your Secret Weapon Against Foreclosure
So, I gave you a lot of information in video one. Just to recap, Chapter 13 is where you’re going to make payments for either three years or 36 months, up to five years or 60 months. You might do a 13 because you make too much money to do a seven. You’re over the qualification limit. You might do a 13 because you already filed a seven in the last eight years. And you have to be careful there because if it’s been less than four years, you won’t get a discharge in your 13th, but we’ll go over that another time. Or you might be doing a 13 because you’re losing your house and you need to force the bank to let you catch up, which you can do in a 13.
So, let’s talk about that. Let’s say you’re in foreclosure, and a lot of people may find themselves in that situation once the COVID forbearance ends. So, this may be something you’re thinking about. If you own a home and you’re behind on that mortgage, often the lender won’t work with you and they’ll just file a foreclosure if they’ll call the note, and if you can’t come up with it, the house gets taken away from you.
Now, Chapter 13, you can file at any point in the process before foreclosure, during foreclosure, or even after the house has been sold. When a house is sold in foreclosure, they have a sheriff’s sale and you can file your 13 even after that sheriff’s sale. The last moment you can, once there’s a sheriff’s sale in foreclosure, that’s state court, they have to have a confirmation of the sale. That’s the last thing that happens.
Long as you file that 13, even minutes before that confirmation, you can stop the bank in its tracks and force them to let you catch up. Of course, you’ve got to make that regular mortgage payment from that month on, plus at least one 60th, or the payment over five years, of what you owe back. You owe 60,000. You got to pay that thousand a month plus the mortgage and you can do the math on the rest.
You can also do this with a car. So, it’s pretty extraordinary powers in Chapter 13. So, a lot of people facing foreclosure reach out to the bank, please make a payment arrangement and they say, “Nope, too late. We’re not going to work with you. That ship has sailed.” Well, just know at that point you call me and we can file Chapter 13 and we’ll do that, as long as you can afford to do it. We always make sure that. But if you can afford it, we’ll file it and you’re going to get that situation fixed.
So in the last video, we’re going to talk about a normal 13, where you just made too much or you already filed a seven. But remember this, if you ever get in trouble with a foreclosure and you’ve got the money to get out of it, but they won’t let you, you call me. You can always reach me, Oklahoma bankruptcy attorney Edward Kelley, at EdwardKelleyLaw@gmail.com, or just give me a call at (580) 478-3130. You can also reach me at oklahomacitybankruptcyattorney.pro.