The Day The Foreclosure Summons Came

Posted by Average Joe on November 11th, 2008 at 10:57pm

I’ll never forget it.  It’s like 9/11… or the day the Challenger blew up.  One of those days that’s etched into my memory forever.

I had been out running some late evening errands. It had already been dark for some time. As I came down the street towards our house, I could see from a long way off that there was an unusual vehicle in the driveway. Its lights were on, and it had an unusual tag.  At first I thought it was some kind of vanity tag with a sports logo or something on it.

Immediately, I was thinking that some strange person is either in my house or trying to get in.  My wife was home alone with our kid(s) (remember… no personal info), so my first thought was their safety.  I hadn’t looked closely at the strange vehicle, but I could clearly hear a (large) dog barking inside of it. By this time, my adrenaline was pumping hard.

There was a lady talking to my wife on the front porch. She was dressed in civilian’s clothes, but a badge was clearly displayed on the front of her outfit — it must’ve been attached to her pants pocket or else to the bottom of her jacket.  At this point, I started to connect the dots — this is someone in law enforcement.  Oh yeah… now that I think about it, I think I saw K-9 on that vehicle.  Okay… it’s starting to connect.

The lady was a sheriff’s deputy, but was in the process service department. She announced that she had foreclosure papers for us.  She was very, very nice.  She was obviously trying to comfort my wife and make her feel better.

The whole thing was a shock.

Yes… we knew we were behind on our mortgage payments. No question about that. But we had been talking to them on the phone. We had filled out paperwork. We had written a hardship letter. We had supplied financial information and disclosed all sorts of personal details. We were talking about our options, including a loan modification.

But not this.

This was out of the blue.

She went on to explain that this actually gave us time. A lot of time. She talked about the 20-day time period in which we must respond. She said once you respond it could take a year… the courts are really backed up. She’s out serving these to tons of people… including a half a dozen people “just this past weekend” in her own neighborhood.

There are so many foreclosures underway right now that the dockets are full.

There was much more to what took place, including some really screwy paperwork. I’ll tell more of the story on another day.

But that night will forever be burned into my memory as the day the foreclosure summons came.

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Tags: adrenaline, financial information, foreclosure summons, hardship letter, loan modification, mortgage payments

Under Legal Mess