For those who have made or are going to make your trial period payments...and then what!?

[learning patience]

Here is the link to the guidelines that our lovely mortgage company is to follow:

https://www.hmpadmin.com/portal/docs/sd0903.pdf

I hope this helps someone out there ! For those of you who are being told to continue making your trial period payments without a true modification in effect, I say "Hooey!"

Read pg. 2 of "Commencement of Modification"

A whole lotta "should's" going on out there, eh?

I just read this and found out we "should" have until Sept 1 to begin our trial modification period, because the cover letter in our packet is dated July 16th, unless I'm reading it wrong? Funny waiting 18 months to get this, and then they give us two weeks to move on it....but we haven't heard back from our attorney yet, which is why we need just a little more time. Oy!

[Evan Bedard]

Hi learning patience,

We are seeing this more and more, borrowers are completeing their trial periods and are still not recieving a final solution to their problems...

[learning patience]

Fine tooth-combing the trial agreement, and am leary about Section 2 Letter F?!

Our BK attorney said our questions about this stuff needs to go to a real estate attorney.....do you know any good ones in Southern Cal? That could fine tooth comb this for us?

[Evan Bedard]

Yes actually I do, here are two very reputable and professional law firms here in California that you can call anytime for a free consultaiton:

The Fransen & Molinaro Law Firm (888) 756-2652

Law Offices of Marshall E. Rosenbach (561) 627-8990

[learning patience]

Evan,

THANK YOU for the referral. I know their advertisement is posted at the top, but something about a "verbal" referral is more comforting.

They were very helpful, gave me the answer to our $340,000 question. My husband called after my appointment and said, "Final Answer????" "A-ok!" We're moving forward with with our trial mod agreement and they said that it was actually one of the more better-written ones they had seen.

It wasn't a free consultation, but for $200 the "insurance" advice on whether or not we (chp7 filers) could move forward with the trial period without hindering our recent house/debt-discharge....?!?!? well worth it.

I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep after this particular hurdle has been hurdled . Onward to the next step. Climbing mountains has to be done in switchbacks, ya know?

Thanks again. And looking forward to hearing from those of you who have finished your trial period...and then what?!

[Blackcandt]

Evan
I am in a similar situation. We go to court on August 22nd for our Bankruptcy meeting of the creditors but wont have a discharge for another 60-90 days. We are including the house in the bankruptcy. I was told today that we were approved for the MHA plan and it is in the final review and we will recieve our paper work in the next week or two. Based on the info you were given is it okay to go ahead with this? Would it be safe to reaffirm the debt once we sign these documents?

Thanks a bunch

[caldwellb02]

Blackcandt - congratulations on the MHA approval! It looks like you are forging ahead.

[learning patience]

Hi Blackcandt,

Congratulations on your mod approval! That's cause for major celebration!

Just to share our story....we applied for HAMP in March, a month after filing bk, and a month before our meeting of creditors. Because we included the house the way that we did, we had to wait for the "automatic stay" on the house to be lifted in order for ANYONE to "really" talk to us from Wamu....turns out, no one "really" talked to us anyway, until 2nd week of July when our 'application cancelled due to insuf. income' and I called someone the next day to see what our options were. (Chase lifted the automatic stay in April, about a month before our discharge)

We NEVER signed a reaffirmation on the house....it was just 'simply' written in a way that, IF they were willing to work out a solution with us THEN we would continue to make new agreed-upon payments.

We did this apparently b/c we filed Chp 7 and were not current on our payments with them when we filed. Reaffirming could only be done if we were current on our payment. Don't know where you're at with that. But I was told today that because we handled our upside down home the way we did in BK, we technically have the 'upper hand'. They'll make more $ if they work with us than if they decide to foreclose.

I would definitely be clear with your attorney about how you want to handle it. If you re-affirm the mortgage, it might be different than if they lift the 'stay' and continue to work with you for the modification. It might stall the modification process a little bit because they'd have to wait for clearing of the stay, but..... in our case, what's the difference???

Again, I don't exacty know where you are at with it, but in our case, we weren't about to reaffirm, even if we were current on our payments....simply due to the not-knowing if they would work with us, and that we could no longer afford the payments on the 1st & 2nd even with a discharge of all other debts due to 50% reduction in income.

I'm interested to find out if they come up with your trial mod before your meeting of creditors....and have they been contacting you in the meantime? or your attorney? We were told they couldn't even contact us during our 'stay.' We could only contact them. ???

Best of luck!!!!

[Moe Bedard]

Sorry to chime in here blackcandt, but why is your lawyer including your home when you have a loan modification offer? My understanding is that if you do include it in BK, then the mod may stop in its tracks and your lender will have what is called an automatic stay placed on them.

Automatic Stay

The filing of a bankruptcy case, under any chapter of the Bankruptcy Code, triggers an injunction against the continuance of any action by any creditor against the debtor or the debtor's property. 11 U.S.C. 362.

In Chapter 13, the stay even protects co debtors who are liable with the debtor on consumer debts.

The automatic stay gives the debtor protection from his creditors, subject to the oversight of the bankruptcy judge, and brings all of the debtor's assets and creditors into the same forum, the bankruptcy court, where the rights of all concerned can be balanced.

[Blackcandt]

We were told the same thing that they could not reaffirm unless we were current on our payments. Which we are not. So That is why we didnt reaffirm. I have not recieved the papers on our trial mod yet so I am not sure if that will be sufficient to reaffirm or not and if we even should at that point without a permenant mod in place.

EMC and Chase both requested a release be signed from our attorney and we sent it and from that point on they were allowed to talk to us. We then started applying for our loan mod and that was back in march.

I am just hoping that we can get something in place before our meeting with creditors.

[kenman]

Blackcandt:

When I filed Ch-7, we were 4 months behind on our mortgage payment.

Our file was transferred from the Homeowner Assistance Department to the Bankruptcy Dept.

We received a denial of our loan mod request (submitted in Feb 09) since we had filed Ch-7.

I was then instructed to deal with the BK Dept at Chase to obtain a bankruptcy workout plan/loan mod.

Chase filed motion to lift the stay, which was granted by the BK court. My file was then reassigned back to the Homeowner Assist Dept.

I had to resubmit all my documents (again).

I received my loan mod documents last week, completed them and fedexed them back to Chase with my first trial period payment.

The payment I sent them on 8-4 was the first payment I have made since Dec 2008.

I have no clue where this will take us but at least we are finally on the road.

Kenman

[Blackcandt]

Thanks so much for all that information. That helps to ease my mind a little. I assume you did not reaffirm the house in the bankruptcy since you were behind?

Blackcandt

[learning patience]

Kenman,
How similar our situations are! Same thing for us. But we didn't make a payment since Feb '08 (other than a couple forebearances on the 2nd and one forebearance on the 1st), filed C-7 in Feb '09. Chase filed for lifting of automatic stay too.

We did NOT reaffirm our house in the bk. Got a "cancelled application" due to insufficient income July 6th, resubmitted July 13th, got our trial pckg July 17th. Payments 8/15, 9/1, 10/1, and another coupon for 11/1.

We paid Fransen & Molinaro to look over our bk docs & our trial mod docs to tell us if there was any tricky clause in there that reaffirmed either the 1st or the 2nd....there wasn't, so we're sending our payment & paperwork this week...hoping that they'll have their sh** together enough when the trial period ends in "October' (hopefully) that the perm. mod will come easily. Because the 2nd was 'charged off' in Dec '08, we won't even worry about it until it's time to sell, refinance, or whatever....the worst that can happen is that it may 'ding' our credit later if we try to buy more properties.....won't be happenin' any time soon for sure, so that bridge will be crossed when we come to it.

Kenman & Blackandt..... 'stay' the course! We'll be in kahootz together on this! I can't wait to hear about your progress & success!!