John Anastasio is an attorney at the Law Offices Of John Anastasio in Stuart, Florida. After receiving a degree in Government from Seton Hall University, Anastasio went on to earn a graduate degree in Public Administration from New York University and a J.D. from Seton Hall University School of Law. In practice since 1981, Anastasio is an expert in the fields of foreclosure defense and bankruptcy law. In this article, he explains what a foreclosure lawsuit really is.
A foreclosure lawsuit is when the bank—or whoever actually owns the mortgage and the note and says what amounts are owed—is alleging that you did not pay them. It’s that simple. Of course, another scenario is that the bank says you breached some other condition of the mortgage or note, but that is a lot less likely. In the vast majority of cases these days, a foreclosure happens because a bank or lending company says that a homeowner has not been making payments on his mortgage.
However, many times when it comes to the people who are suing a homeowner, we cannot actually tell if these are the people who even own the mortgage or note anymore. In that case, the company filing the foreclosure lawsuit might not even be the company who the homeowner actually owes money to. So that is really the crux of why you should hire a lawyer if you are facing foreclosure. Having someone with expertise on your side is really going to be the best way to sort these issues out.
Homeowners have nothing to lose by hiring a foreclosure defense attorney in their case. In fact, the way I explain it to people is that hiring me to represent you in a foreclosure case will actually cost less in the long run than finding a new apartment rental to stay in and paying first and last month’s rent and a security deposit in order to move in. If I can make it so that a client can stay in his or her home for the duration of the ongoing lawsuit, then the odds are my services are going to be less than what that client would be paying to find a new apartment to rent.
To be really blunt, if I last more than a couple months in a case—and it can take months and months, if not years, to resolve many of these foreclosure lawsuit cases—then you are going to end up with a situation where you are getting a good return on your money for what you invest in hiring a foreclosure defense attorney.
Everyone is entitled to a lawyer in a foreclosure case. That is your right. As long as you can afford it, the court can’t prevent you from hiring a lawyer. In fact, in many cases, the courts would prefer homeowners to hire a lawyer because it is a lot less confusing than when a lay person tries to handle a case like this on their own. That is why I would encourage anyone who can afford to hire an attorney to do so if they have been hit with a foreclosure lawsuit.
