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We recently reported that a debtor could strip off a second mortgage in Chapter 7 due to the decision the 11th Circuit reached in McNeal v. GMAC Mortgage, LLC (In re McNeal) (11th Cir. 2012). At the time the Court ruled in the case the Court decided not to publish the opinion, which meant that lower courts in the 11th Circuit were not required to follow the decision.
However, the Court in McNeal, recently published the opinion, which now means that lower courts in the 11th Circuit are required to follow the decision. Now, debtors in Chapter 7 in the 11th Circuit can strip off wholly unsecured mortgages.
Call us today to find out if you qualify.
The post ***Update on Stripping off Second Mortgages in Chapter 7*** appeared first on St. Petersburg Law Blog.

Having a judgment filed against you brings with it a new level of debt collection. Thankfully, there are some things you can do to ease the pain.
A judgment is nothing more than a decision by a court that has been entered into the public record.
In order for that decision to be made, someone must file a lawsuit. You get time to formally Answer (that’s a technical term, which is why it’s capitalized) and fight the lawsuit.
If you don’t fight the lawsuit by filing an Answer or similarly responsive pleading then a default judgment will be entered.
If you do fight and lose the lawsuit, a judgment will be entered.
SEE ALSO:

• What Does A Judgment Mean?
• Credit Card Lawsuit – Why You Should Always Fight.
• Here Are Your Options When Served With A Collection Lawsuit

That’s the easy stuff. Now onto the nuts and bolts.
Do I Have A Judgment Against Me?
As noted above, you’re not supposed to wake up one day to find a judgment against you. You’re supposed to receive notice of a lawsuit, followed by a period of time during which you can choose to respond to the Complaint.
That said, it’s possible that the creditor filed the lawsuit and either served you incorrectly or not at all. It’s also possible that you got the lawsuit papers and didn’t realize they were more than just more letters from the creditor.
The most common ways you may find out that there are outstanding judgements against you in one of the following ways:

• letter in the mail or phone call from the collection attorneys;
• garnishee notice from your payroll department;
• freeze on your bank account; or
• routine check of your credit report.

SEE ALSO:

• Why Check Your Credit Report (And How Often)
• How To Get Your Credit Report Quickly And Easily

What Happens When A Judgment Is Entered Against You
When you go past due on a debt, the creditor calls and sends letters in an attempt to convince you to pay.
Eventually, it goes to a collection agency.
When all else fails, the matter is turned over to a lawyer. That lawyer files a lawsuit and gets a judgment against you for the specific purpose of getting you to make payments.
The judgment becomes a matter of public record, and is indexed with the clerk of the court. It shows up on your credit report as well as on any background checks.
The judgment is considered a lien against your property, including any real estate that you have, in the state in which the judgment is filed. In other words, a judgment filed in California has no bearing upon property located in New York unless the creditor takes the California judgment to a New York court and has it filed there as well.
What Can A Judgment Creditor Do?
If a judgment has been issued against you, the creditor can satisfy its judgment by freezing your bank account and taking a portion of your wages. Procedures differ from state to state.
For example, in New York the creditor needs to get in touch with an enforcement officer such as a Marshal or Sheriff. Once that happens, he or she can serve a restraining notice on the bank, or on some other person or business that owes money to the judgment debtor, and eventually take the money. If you are employed, the enforcement officer can garnish (take) a portion of your salary to satisfy the judgment.
SEE ALSO:

• Frozen Bank Account Exemption In New York
• Judgment In New York – Can You Go To Jail?

In California, however, you aren’t allowed to take any action for 30 days from the date that the clerk mailed the Notice of Entry of Judgment. If you don’t take action to resolve the matter during that time, the creditor can:

• Get in touch with you;
• Levy (seize) assets;
• Examine you in court to locate unknown assets;
• Suspend your driver’s license if the judgment is for auto accident;
• Suspend your professional license (example: Contractor’s License); or
• Place a lien on land, buildings, or residence.

How To Resolve A Judgment Against You
Once the judgment is entered and finalized, you can’t fight it anymore. The creditor has claimed that you owe money, and a court has agreed. That said, here are some options for you to consider:

• pay the balance due in full;
• work with the creditor to settle the debt or work out an agreeable payment plan;
• allow the creditor to seize your assets in payment of the debt;
• repay the debt involuntarily through a wage garnishee;
• file for Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy as a means of discharging or repaying the debt (depending on your situation.

SEE ALSO:

• Chapter 7 Bankruptcy – What Is It And How Does It Work?
• Chapter 13 Bankruptcy Basics
• G Is For Garnishment

 Which Choice Do You Make?
The judgment creditor can take steps against you to make your life even more difficult.  Having all the information you need about your options makes all the difference.
Whatever you do, don’t just ignore things. That only makes it worse.
Here’s What It Means To Have A Judgment Filed Against You – And What You Can Do About It was originally published on Consumer Help Central. If you're seeing this message on another site, it has been stolen and is being used without permission. That's illegal, a violation of copyright, and just plain awful.

The elimination of debt through bankruptcy is probably the greatest step any consumer can take towards obtaining financial freedom. For most of our Oregon and Washington bankruptcy clients, eliminating the debts is only part of the process. While none of our clients are hellbent on obtaining another credit card, most of them have very realistic concerns about their credit scores and reports. Everyone, myself included, wants to put themselves in the best possible position to be able to get a mortgage a couple years down the line or not have their credit score be a concern during the interview process.
These credit concerns have made us re-evaluate the product that we offer. We now offer tools for rebuilding credit after bankruptcy. I am really proud to say that we now stand out from other bankruptcy firms in Washington and Oregon in that I believe that we are the only firm that is taking real action in helping its clients obtain financial freedom rather than just eliminating the debts.
To that end, we taken to major steps. First, we have hired a company with a proven track record to provide credit repair education to our clients. Once you have obtained a discharge in bankruptcy, we offer this service free of charge to all our clients. As a result, I believe that I can truthfully say that you will probably have a higher credit score in two years after filing bankruptcy with our firm than if you choose another. Second, we have begun to seriously promote the practice of taking active steps six months out from bankruptcy discharge to ensure that our Washington and Oregon bankruptcy clients’ credit reports accurately reflect all their debts as discharged.
The first step towards cleaning up your credit report is obtaining a copy of your credit report six months after your bankruptcy discharge and then sending a copy of it on to me. The first step towards rebuilding your credit score is requesting a login and password for our credit repair education classes so that we can get your started.
If you have filed bankruptcy with our firm and haven’t begun the process of getting your credit report cleaned up and rebuilding your credit score make sure to contact us today. We would be more than happy to help.
 
 
The original post is titled Rebuilding Credit Scores After Bankruptcy Discharge , and it came from Oregon Bankruptcy Lawyer | Portland, Salem, and Vancouver, Wa .

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that JPMorgan Chase & Co has decided to get out of the student loan business, citing competition from federal government programs, increased scrutiny from regulators, and lack of growth in the sector.
The whole thing reads like something out of an alternate universe. And anyone who buys their rationale should call me, because I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d love to sell to them.
Let’s look at the landscape, shall we?

Private Student Loans Are Money Makers For The Bank
Private banks haven’t been able to offer federal student loans since 2010. In the intervening three years from then until the time that Chase decided to pull the plug on their student loan activities, the private student loan market has exploded.
The cost of higher education has increased, to be sure. But more to the point is the fact that the ancillary costs of higher education has gone through the roof.
We’re talking about costs that don’t get factored into the university figures. Things like gasoline to get to and from class, food, rent for off-campus housing, and just day-to-day living.
Meanwhile, the caps on federal student loans have remains unchanged.
Faced with the gap between the cost of education and the ability to finance those costs, students are turning in record numbers to private student loans. We’re talking about a growth rate of 25% per year in private student loans.
But Only When People Pay Their Private Student Loans
Private student loans, as you see, are quite the moneymaker for banks. But when borrowers go into default, that profit margin shrinks quickly.
That’s exactly what’s happened to the private student loan market in the past few years. In fact, Moody’s says:

The default rate index for first-quarter 2013 was 4.0%, down considerably from 5.0% in first-quarter 2012. The year-over-year decline of more than 18% marks the fourth consecutive quarter of sizeable year-over-year improvement. The rate is still about 50% higher than pre-recession levels, but is an improvement from prior quarters, when it was about twice as high.
The 90-plus delinquency rate index was 2.4% in first-quarter 2013, down slightly from the same period in 2012. “Ninety-plus delinquencies will continue to decline slowly, as they have since peaking in mid-2009,” says Moody’s Fustar.
The PSL Indices track more than ten years of credit performance data on 71 private student loan securitizations that Moody’s rates, representing approximately $40 billion in outstanding pool balance.

Sure, the delinquency rates have fallen – but when 4.0% go into default and another 2.4% are 90 days or more past due, that’s got to hurt.
Private Student Loan Securitization Problem
Not only are private student loans becoming less profitable for JPMorgan Chase, but their business model is under the microscope.
Remember the whole mortgage securitization thing? You know, the one that led to millions of homeowners being foreclosed upon with shoddy paperwork and robosigning running rampant?
Well, hang onto your hats. In case you didn’t know, most of those private student loans are securitized as well.
That means most lawsuits brought by private student lenders and securitized trusts such as National Collegiate Student Loan Trust are at risk for the same sorts of defenses.
Loans Are Most Likely To Be Worthless
The last big securitization wave involved mortgage lending, which made sense to investors because there was a stop-loss position in place.
Don’t pay the mortgage and the holders of the paper takes back the house. Sell the house back on the open market and limit your losses.
For private student loans, however, there is no such protection. If you don’t pay your private student loan, the securitized trust needs to sue you. Once finalized, a judgment gives the holder of the paper nothing more than the ability to freeze a bank account or withhold part of your income.
Those collection activities may not yield much of a payout for the holder of the student loan, and it could take years to reap even a small amount of money.
At this point, not many private student loan borrowers are defending lawsuits brought against them by National Collegiate Student Loan Trust and other such entities. My office has been handling more and more of them over the past year or so, and the volume of cases is definitely picking up.
As more lawyers start practicing in the field of student loan law, I can guarantee that the private student loan securitized trusts are going to be in for a rough time of things.
Stand By For the Next Meltdown
JPMorgan Chase may be getting out of the private student loan business, but there are still lots of companies happy to dole out the dollars.
Sallie Mae, Wells Fargo & Co., and Discover Financial Services are going to keep making private student loans because undergraduate students are demanding the easy credit.
This, much in the same way that Countrywide and other lenders kept fanning the flames of the subprime mortgage industry until that came crashing in.
Ready for the next meltdown? Stay tuned, it’s coming soon.
Image Credit:  Canadian Pacific
Why JPMorgan Chase Is Going To Stop Offering Student Loans was originally published on Consumer Help Central. If you're seeing this message on another site, it has been stolen and is being used without permission. That's illegal, a violation of copyright, and just plain awful.