Using Chapter 13 bankruptcy to save homes
While Florida has largely emerged from the mortgage crisis of the mid-2000s, some people remain in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure. If you are behind on your mortgage and are worried about foreclosure, it is possible for you to be able to prevent it from happening through Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Your situation may be unique as no two cases are the same. If you have a regular income and qualify for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you may be able to stop all foreclosure proceedings by filing a petition. You would need to be able to catch up the back amounts that you owe on your mortgage while continuing to make your regular mortgage payments through a repayment plan that lasts from three to five years.
If you are behind but cannot reasonably enter into a mortgage repayment agreement because of having limited financial resources, you may file a Chapter 7 bankruptcy petition in order to have some more time to consider all of your options, including negotiating a short sale. Bankruptcy may also allow you to discharge most of your unsecured debts, possibly freeing up money so that you can catch up on what you owe.
At our firm, we help clients who are in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure to figure out what options they might have. We analyze their financial situations and then advise them on the approaches that might work to stop foreclosure. In some cases, we attempt to negotiate short sales. In others, we might help by filing Chapter 13 bankruptcy petitions and proposing workable repayment plans. If you have questions, you may want to review our page about saving your home.