Recent Blog Posts

Not All Debtors are Deadbeats

McCue Law — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 23:31:00 GMT

Consumer advocates say not all debtors are deadbeats. "A large percentage of the people who come into my office are not chronic spenders,'' said Lisa McCue, an attorney whose clients include those filing for bankruptcy. "They are unemployed or underemployed and desperately trying to stay afloat. They're charging groceries, car payments, and other monthly bills.'' Read full article online: http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2011-03-20/news/fl-debt-cases-20110320_1_credit-card-debt-collection-debtors

Fannie and Freddie's Foreclosure Barons

McCue Law — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:05:00 GMT

- By Andy Kroll Mother Jones

FORECLOSURE MILLS OWE their existence to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federally guaranteed entities that essentially created, beginning in 1968, the vast marketplace where loans are traded. Their mandate was to promote homeownership by making a large pool of credit available at affordable rates. They accomplished this by buying up mortgage debt from banks and packaging it into bonds, allowing investors to get in on the action. Banks responded by lending out more money, and Fannie and Freddie's combined mortgage portfolio exploded from $61 billion in 1980 to $1.2 trillion two decades later, according to the Government Accountability Office. Their dominance gave them the clout to rewrite rules for the mortgage industry-standardizing underwriting guidelines, loan documents, and the like.

Fannie and Freddie also reshaped the foreclosure industry. Their huge holdings meant they had to deal with thousands of foreclosures annually-even during time when relatively few loans were going bad. In the 1990s, the market expanded into subprime territory to feed the securitization beast, and borrowers began defaulting at higher rates. Hiring lawyers on a case-by-case basis was burdensome, so Fannie and Freddie put together a stable of law firms willing to litigate large bundles of foreclosures quickly and cheaply. They urged these handpicked firms to bring all foreclosure-related services-inspections, eviction notices, sales of repossessed properties, and so forth-in-house. Thus emerged the foreclosure supermarket.

In a recent speech, Stern noted the administration's homeowner-relief program. "Fortunately, it is failing," he told prospective investors.

Stern's company is one of dozens of mills that now churn through more than a million cases a year for Fannie and Freddie, big banks, and private lenders. Built like industrial assembly lines, the mills employ small armies of paralegals and other low-level employees who mass-produce court filings, run title searches, and schedule scores of hearings and property auctions daily. Staff attorneys appear for dozens of court hearings in rapid succession, dashing from one courtroom to the next with rolling file cabinets. Stern and his ilk typically create in-house subsidiaries that bill the parent law firm for the various paper-pushing tasks. "All sorts of crap is loaded on," notes Irv Ackelsberg, a Philadelphia consumer-law attorney.

The business model is simple: to tear through cases as quickly as possible. (Stern's company handled 70,382 foreclosures in 2009 alone.) This breakneck pace stems from how the mills get paid. Rather than billing hourly, they receive a predetermined flat fee for the foreclosure-typically around $1,000-plus add-ons for all the side services. The more they foreclose, the more they make. As a result, say consumer attorneys and legal experts, even families who have been foreclosed upon illegally-and can afford to make good on their mortgages-end up getting steamrolled. "It's 'How fast can I turn this file?'" says Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates in Washington, DC. "For these guys, the law is irrelevant, the process is irrelevant, the substance is irrelevant."

In 2006, for instance, a federal bankruptcy judge blasted New Jersey law firm Shapiro & Diaz for filing 250 home-seizure motions presigned by an employee who had left the firm more than a year earlier. Calling it "the blithe implementation of a renegade practice," the judge slapped Shapiro & Diaz with $125,000 in fines. The following year, a federal judge in Texas fined foreclosure giant Barrett Burke Wilson Castle Daffin & Frappier $65,000 for filing computer-generated documents the judge called "grossly erroneous" and "gibberish." Likewise, Wells Fargo was fined $95,000 thanks to shoddy paperwork by Florida Default Law Group-a Wells contractor that clearly believed, according to the judge, that "filing any old pleading without undertaking any investigation into its accuracy is perfectly acceptable practice." (In April, the state attorney general's office began probing Florida Default for allegedly "fabricating and/or presenting false and misleading documents in foreclosure cases.")

Enough is enough.

McCue Law — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:38:00 GMT

You lost your job or suffered a major pay cut
Your mortgage rate adjusted and your payments are too much to handle
Your received a notice of default on your mortgage
You’re headed for foreclosure and you have no place to go
Your savings are gone
You’re selling your possessions for extra money
You’re struggling to pay for basics like groceries and gas
You’ve lost your health insurance And, your telephone rings, and rings, and rings . . .

For the vast majority of us, it's brutal trying to survive in today’s economy. The banking institutions, the lending institutions, the mortgage industry, the insurance companies, the oil companies, and our “let-them-do-whatever-they-want” style of government have put us in a crisis. With astronomical profits, oil companies pulverized us at the pump with ridiculously inflated prices.

Greedy mortgage lenders and brokers wooed us into horrible loan deals. They lied to us and told us we’d be able to refinance later for better rates. They placed false information on our loan applications. They went into lower income neighborhoods and intentionally lured unsophisticated borrowers into horrendous deals.

Credit card companies barrage us with offers as if they want to be our best friend. Now that most of us have fallen on hard times, these industries have become ferocious beasts chewing us up and spitting us out without any conscience. Credit card companies love to kick us when we are down. Pay late and they mercilessly jack up your interest rate. Then they tack on obscene penalties. When you need relief the most, they do everything to keep you down. They send your telephone numbers to massive, computerized call centers overseas. Automated telephone dialers ring your telephone non-stop. They'll stop at nothing even calling cell phone numbers to keep you constantly under attack everywhere you go. Next comes the lawsuit and the humiliation when your employer is ordered to garnish your wages for payment to creditors.

Millions of Americans are living under these conditions. Thousands upon thousands have been forced out of their homes. Lenders file deficiency judgments against the newly homeless. The unconscionable greed of these institutions is despicable. They authored this disaster and now are crushing Americans to pay for their sins.

Your human spirit is at stake. No one can prosper and flourish when they are being so mercilessly beaten down. Worry and anxiety are killers of the soul. It’s time to put an end to those incessant telephone calls. Every time it rings, you are being pushed further down into defeat. There is no rest. After struggling to survive all day, you spend all night worried about how you are going to make it through another day. It’s time to shed all that runaway debt which grows and grows with every penalty and interest rate hike. It’s time to compel your mortgage company to reset your agreement to something fair and reasonable. It’s time to fight that foreclosure action without letting them get their default judgment to take your home without any hearing. It’s time to expose all the predatory lending tactics and lies that brought you into that lousy mortgage deal.

IT’S TIME TO GET ON A NEW COURSE
IT’S TIME TO SURVIVE
MORTGAGE LOAN MODIFICATION
FORECLOSURE FREEZING
ELIMINATION OF DEBT THROUGH BANKRUPTCY

Simply answering a foreclosure complaint before a default is filed can provide you with many months in your home. Many lenders, if approached by an attorney, will become more willing to modify loans. Not paying credit card companies will provide much needed funds for necessities like food, housing, gasoline, transportation, and insurance. Shedding debt through bankruptcy will make those calls stop and those credit card companies go away forever. No credit card lawsuits. No garnishments. A chance to get back on your feet without being beaten down.

THE TIME IS NOW

You can’t afford not to hire an attorney. Chapter 7 bankruptcies typically cost between $1,500 - $2,500 depending on complexity. Chapter 13 bankruptcies cost between $2,500 - $3,000, with most of the fees payable as part of the Chapter 13 repayment plan. Answering a foreclosure complaint is typically about $1,000, with ongoing legal fees far less than the cost of your monthly mortgage payment. Now, you'll have the time to regroup, strategize, and to develop an appropriate fitting your circumstances. Mortgage loan modifications through an attorney range from $1,900 to $3,000. Each situation must be individually evaluated to determine the exact price. But, in almost every case, the benefit of the service is far more valuable than the alternative of doing nothing.

YOU NEED TIME IN YOUR HOME

YOU NEED A BETTER MORTGAGE DEAL

YOU NEED TO END THE CREDIT CARD COMPANY HARRASSMENT

YOU NEED TO BREATHE AND LIVE AGAIN

YOU NEED A CHANCE TO GET YOUR LIFE BACK AND BE RELEASED FROM THE PRISON OF DEBT