In most bankruptcy cases, your home mortgage is not affected, and if you want to keep your home, you have to continue the payments. However, there is an important exception to this rule which applies in chapter 13 cases.
If your home is worth less than what you owe on your mortgages, to the point where the second or third mortgage is not secured by your home’s market value, you can remove the mortgage and never have to pay it. Here’s how it works.
Say your home is worth $350,000 and the first mortgage has a balance of $355,000. Let’s also say you have a second mortgage with a balance of $30,000. Because the home is worth only $350,000, the second mortgage is not secured by any value. That is there is no equity in your home above the first mortgage
A chapter 13 case can remove a wholly unsecured mortgage. In our example, removing the mortgage could not be done if the home were worth $370,000, because then there would be some value securing the second mortgage.
You need to file a bankruptcy court lawsuit against the second mortgage holder to obtain a court order removing the second mortgage. This could involve expensive litigation over over your home’s true market value, so many people are reluctant to even try.
You can avoid this problem by including a provision in your chapter 13 plan specifying your home’s market value, the balance owed on the first mortgage, the balance owed on the second mortgage, and stating that these figures are binding on the creditors involved. Your chapter 13 plan needs to explicitly state that when the court confirms your plan, these figures are binding on the second mortgage holder, as a federal court order, and that the second mortgage holder cannot re-open later the question of your home’s market value. Most court districts recognize such a provision as being binding on the creditor if it fails to object.
Later, when you file your bankruptcy court lawsuit to remove the second mortgage, the second mortgage holder is bound by the market value figure you specified in your chapter 13 plan. This means the second mortgage holder cannot effectively defend against your request, because if the market value is known, and if the second mortgage is wholly unsecured, then the court should grant your request no matter what the second mortgage holder has to say about it.
This procedure enables you to avoid spending time and money on a lawsuit in bankruptcy court over your home’s value, because the second mortgage holder had notice and a chance to contest these values by your chapter 13 plan’s fixing of your home’s market value.
It is very important that a person who is attempting to remove a second mortgage through a Chapter 13 plan, actually complete the plan. If the Chapter 13 bankruptcy gets dismissed or converted then the second mortgage will not be removed from the property. It is only after the person completes the Chapter 13 plan that the mortgage company will release the lien from the home.
Posted by: Riverside Lawyer | August 07, 2011 at 10:41 PM