THE DANGERS OF DEFENDING YOUR FORECLOSURE CASE WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY

We have attempted to provide assistance here to attorneys and to people without attorneys. A good friend and colleague submitted the following piece which is well worth reading.

In reading through the many mortgage “horror stories” which I have seen both on your blog and elsewhere, it is understandable that homeowners who are being sued for foreclosure are frustrated with the system and that many have  decided, through their own reading and possibly because of financial issues, to defend their case themselves and proceed to court without an attorney. Doing so not may not only hamper a homeowner’s efforts to defend the foreclosure, but may make the matter worse and actually wind up accelerating the foreclosure process.

The area of law in mortgage foreclosure defense is evolving at a rapid and unprecedented rate. Never in the history of the United States have so many foreclosure cases been filed in such a short period of time. The Judges of the Courts, who are for the most part already overworked, now have caseloads which well exceed any capacity which anyone could have imagined and, as to foreclosure cases (which were historically disposed of on a 5-minute “motion” hearing with little or no opposition from the homeowner), each case now has the potential for going all the way to trial. Further, not every Judge is an expert in any one area of the law, and most do not have the additional time to learn or keep up with a rapidly evolving area of the law such as mortgage foreclosure defense. Most mortgage foreclosure cases are “blind assigned” by the Clerk of the Court, meaning that the homeowner’s case could be assigned to a Judge with little or no knowledge of current mortgage foreclosure defense law. Strike one.

Lawyers attend three years of intensive schooling just to learn “legalese” and prepare for the Bar Exam. Real “lawyering” comes years later after an attorney has practiced his or her craft for literally hundreds of thousands of hours. Litigation, which is that area of the law involving court battles, is a specialty in itself. Professional litigators have years of training and experience in not only learning the actual law itself, but applying it in the proper manner in court papers and argument through the proper procedure and properly before the Judge. As Judges recognize a litigator, the case can proceed much more smoothly and properly on the law (including the establishment of defenses) when a litigator is involved. Judges usually have little or no time or patience with non-lawyers who try to argue their own cases. Strike two.

Tags: arbitrator, Barnes, courts, foreclosure defense, judges, Mediator
Posted in Eviction |