Saving Your Home Through Bankruptcy
The fear of losing your home is one of the most stressful situations a family can face. Because of higher adjustable interest rate mortgages, the rising cost of gasoline and home heating bills, a increasing number of households in mid-Michigan are becoming delinquent on their mortgage payments and are facing foreclosure.
The difficultly in making mortgage payments on time are often compounded by late fees and the fact that once you are behind on mortgage payments, most mortgage companies will not accept a partial payment. A homeowner is then faced with the challenge of making 3 or 4 mortgage payments with late fees and possible attorney fees all at once or none at all. One of the few recourses left to a homeowner is a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy.
A Chapter 13 Bankruptcy must be filed before the foreclosure sale takes place to do any good in saving your home. After a foreclosure sale, an individual has only six (6)
months right of redemption, in which the entire balance of the mortgage, must be satisfied or the home is lost through foreclosure proceedings.
A Chapter 13 Bankruptcy is structured payment plans up to 60 months long that allow an individual to slowly month-by-month catch up on mortgage payment arrearages. The amount of payment made monthly varies based upon an individual's income and the size of the debt. An additional financial relief to an individual under a Chapter 13 Bankruptcy is that you can discharge up to 90% of unsecured debt; this amount may vary however depending on your annual income and expenses. Faced with an alternative of losing your home or filing bankruptcy more and more households are choosing bankruptcy to save their homes.
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