With home values flat or even trending downwards in recent months, many Chapter 7 debtors who have been discharged are asking what happens if they stop paying their mortgages and walk away from homes that are worth less than the outstanding mortgage.
If you entered into a reaffirmation agreement during your Chapter 7, you remain liable [...]

In 2008 the Georgia Legislature passed, and the Governor signed, a change to Georgia’s foreclosure laws that now require all foreclosure notices to include the name, address and telephone number of the individual or entity who has authority to negotiate a loan modification.
The citation for this provision is O.C.G.A. Section 44-14-162.2 and it reads as [...]

Reaffirming a debt, especially a mortgage debt, is not a decision that should be entered into lightly as I discuss in more detail on my Atlanta bankruptcy web site.   I recently received an email from a lady who apparently discharged her personal liability for a mortgage in a Chapter 7 then post-discharge entered into a [...]

Every day, newspapers, TV and radio programs and blogs like this one report about the “foreclosure crisis” in the United States.  Much of the information about foreclosures comes from a federal agency called the Office of Comptroller of Currency, or OCC.
The OCC is a federal agency that charters, regulates and supervises national banks in the [...]

Today’s Atlanta Journal Constitution ran a page one article in the Metro section entitled “Who Owns My House?”  The article highlights the case of a 68 year old seamstress named Zella Mae Green who has filed bankruptcy four times over the past twenty years to stop foreclosures.  The problem – her mortgage has been bought [...]

If recessionary pressures on home values were not already a problem residents of Clayton County, Georgia face even bleaker prospects when trying to refinance mortgages or sell their homes.  Clayton County’s 50,000 student public school system has lost its accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
This means that Clayton County diplomas will not [...]

For many years, Gwinnett County, Georgia, an upscale suburb of Atlanta held the distinction of being one of the nation’s fastest growing counties.  For years, new subdivisions sprouted in Gwinnett in land that used to be cow pastures.
Maybe the cows will be staging a comeback.  Today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that in 2008, Gwinnett has recorded [...]

While the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seemed to come from nowhere, the seeds of the collapse of the nation’s mortgage system were fairly obvious to those of us who represented bankruptcy debtors during the past ten years.  Time and time again, I would meet with honest, sincere and hardworking debtors who found [...]

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a front page article today about a defendant who will be sentenced today for setting up a mortgage fraud scheme that turned around 20% of the homes in a middle class minority suburb of Atlanta into empty shells.  The defendant, a 40 year old man named Kevin Wiggins, recruited straw buyers [...]

As a debtor’s attorney, my job is to counsel prospective bankruptcy clients about the bankruptcy laws and how to gain as much benefit as possible from a bankruptcy filing.  After 20+ years representing honest, hardworking people in bankruptcy court, I know that for the vast majority of bankruptcy filers, the decision to contact a lawyer [...]