chap7 and your mortgage

[michaela]

I just met my girlfried who is 7 months behind on her mortgage and I asked how she was doing she replied "doing great filed for bankruptcy so everything is nice and quiet". I said you filed a chap 13 (which I am in) and she said no a chapter 7. Can you keep your home in a chapter 7?????

[iv65536]

I think the bank will be moving to lift the stay shortly.

[LadyInTheRed]

I think the bank will be moving to lift the stay shortly.

Either that or they'll wait until after discharge to foreclose.

[btbeme]

Short answer - if you have something with a lien on it (house, car, boat, etc) then you must pay for it if you plan to keep it, BK or not.

The bankruptcy discharges your personal liability for the debt, but if the item has a perfected lien (like a mortgage) and it isn't paid up, then the BK will only delay - not stop - the eventual repossession.

[davetedge]

NY foreclosures are very slow.

She will ultimately lose her home, but if your girlfriend lives in NY, she won't be evicted any time soon. The BK7 will suspend any foreclosure actions, and after that it'll take 3+ years for the foreclosure process to complete.

I am in a similar situation. I'll be filing chapter 7 soon, and stopped making my mortgage payments in 2009. In 2010, it started with a preforeclosure notice (Lis Pendens) and then ground to a halt for me when the NY courts started requiring attorneys to affirm the accuracy of their mortgage paperwork.

The court clerk told me that its taking about 3 years for a foreclosure to make its way through the system once the foreclosure action is filed. For me its been 8 months since the settlement conferences ended, and I'm still waiting for the filing.