If you have been served with a foreclosure action in Florida it is highly advisable to call a Florida foreclosure attorney immediately. At Loan Lawyers, LLC we will give you a free consultation with one of our foreclosure defense attorneys in Broward (Fort Lauderdale / Plantation), Miami Dade (North Miami Beach / Coral Gables), or Palm Beach (Delray Beach). Even if you have a foreclosure case that is not in South Florida, we represent clients in all Florida counties.
The Florida Foreclosure Process Step by Step
If you have been served with a summons, you have only 20 days to file a legally sufficient response in court. You must raise admit or deny each of the banks allegations and raise all applicable affirmative defenses, as well as file any counterclaims that you may have. This must be done properly or you rune the risk of losing you home quickly. A licensed Florida foreclosure attorney is properly trained to file these pleadings. It is not advisable to do this on your own. We see many people who respond without an attorney and end up admitting things that they should not be admitting. If you fail to respond timely and properly to the foreclosure complaint, you run the risk of getting a default entered against you. This means that you have admitted all of the bank's allegations as true and you do not have any defenses. This is not a good position to be in. At Loan Lawyers, LLC we offer affordable rates for foreclosure defense in Florida. One of our foreclosure lawyers will meet you for your free consultation in one of our Miami-Dade (North Miami Beach / Coral Gables), Broward (Fort Lauderdale / Plantation), or Palm Beach (Delray Beach) County offices.
There are many possible defenses to a mortgage foreclosure. Florida home loans have been bought and sold so many times that it is not uncommon to find that the bank has lost the original paperwork or that the transfers may not have been done correctly. This may provide for a great defense to use in your foreclosure case. Oftentimes, it’s not even a bank that is suing a homeowner for mortgage foreclosure in Florida. It may be a securitized trust. This is when your loan and mortgage were bundled with thousands of other loans and mortgages and sold as securities on Wall Street.
These loans are problematic for the banks when they seek to foreclose on someone's house. The documents that govern these trusts, which are called pooling and servicing agreements, are usually anywhere from 250 to 700 pages long. They contain many requirements that the trustee must comply with when taking a loan into the trust. Your foreclosure defense lawyer in Florida may be able to take the position in your case that the trustee did not comply with these regulations, so the mortgage was not properly placed into the trust and the trust has no standing to foreclose on your property.
The next major step in the foreclosure process is the summary judgment hearing. This is when the bank will produce its evidence to the court, such as the mortgage, the note, the assignment of mortgage, the allonge, and any supporting affidavits. Unless you have an affidavit or other evidence that creates a material issue of fact (meaning that there is some discrepancy in the documents or some defense that should trump the documents) the bank will most likely get a sale date for your property. This is obviously not good. These motions can be difficult to beat and unless you are trained on the rules of evidence and the rules of civil procedure, you are unlikely to win this motion. If you have been served with a summary judgment motion, it is highly advisable that you contact a foreclosure defense attorney immediately. At Loan Lawyers, LLC we will give you a free consultation with one of our lawyers in Broward (Fort Lauderdale / Plantation), Miami-Dade (North Miami Beach / Coral Gables), or Palm Beach (Delray Beach).
A Foreclosure attorney in Florida should be able to make a lot happen before the summary judgment. For example the Florida foreclosure attorneys at Loan Lawyers, LLC will send a Request for Production to the bank forcing them to turn over every document in their file about your loan and their lending practices. We will send interrogatories, which are questions that the bank will have to answer in writing and under oath by a bank official. We also set depositions, which is when we subpoena bank officials to testify about your loan. If the bank's case is going to fall apart, it will usually do so at this stage. Sometimes the bank doesn't want you to dig and they will even dismiss your foreclosure! Although any homeowner is legally allowed to represent themselves, it is generally not advisable. The procedures described in this paragraph are incredible tools to be used in defending your foreclosure. You need a Florida foreclosure attorney that is well versed in these techniques. At Loan Lawyers, LLC we have foreclosure lawyers in Miami-Dade (North Miami Beach / Coral Gables), Broward (Fort Lauderdale / Plantation), and Palm Beach (Delray BEach), although we represent clients in all Florida counties.
What To Look For When Defending a Florida Foreclosure Case And Why You Should Hire a Licensed Florida Foreclosure Attorney
At Loan Lawyers, LLC, our foreclosure defense attorneys are trained to know how to spot illegal activity by the banks. For one, we have amassed a large database on bank officials. When a client comes to our office with their foreclosure lawsuit, we will compare the signatures on the bank paperwork to other signatures that we have collected. This is one way in which we look for forgeries in the foreclosure documents. We also look to see when a bank came into existence, and when mergers occurred. This is one way to bust the bank backdating documents. They will sometimes have an assignment of mortgage that was dated on a certain day, but when you do the research, you find that that bank had already merged with another by then. This may prove that the date of the document is not legitimate. We have also hired handwriting experts to compare signatures and look for forgeries.
This is just a small slice of what we look for in a foreclosure defense case. We strongly urge you to contact a foreclosure defense lawyer in Florida who focuses on foreclosure defense if you are behind on your mortgage payments. At Loan Lawyers, LLC, our consultations are free and we have offices in Broward (Fort Lauderdale / Plantation), Miami-Dade (North Miami Beach / Coral Gables)) and Palm Beach (Delray Beach)Counties. Call 1-888-FIGHT-13 for your free consultation.