Need advice please - served papers last night

[debbie42]

Hi everyone, we were discharged Ch. 7 in Dec. 2009. We left our house within 2 months of filing as we were instructed to do. Last night (May 27th) we got served papers saying the bank is suing us and we have 20 days to write a letter to them, within the thick packet they left us was a Lis Pendens...so is this just a formality? Will we actually have to go to court and pay our crappy bk attny. more money? I called them first thing this morning but no return call yet, as expected. We are in S. FL and house mortgages were included in the filing paperwork.

So what I am asking is, will we have to go to court? Do we need an attorney? I do NOT want to stall we haven't lived there for 9 months already, I want it sold and overwith.

Sorry if this was covered before, I looked and didn't find anything,

Thanks for any advice!

[willsurvive]

Did you re-affirm the house? I'm assuming not, these papers are all just formality. They legally have to go through it in order to get the house back in their possession. If you do nothing, the process will proceed as normal, you will not get sued (that debt was discharged in the bk).

[debbie42]

Thanks, nope we did not reaffirm, the first page of the summons says we have to repond within 20 days, I think they mean if you want to keep the house, which we do not. I do not want to do anythign to delay but dont' want to break any laws or not do what we're supposed to either...would be nice if my attny. actually returned my call!

[imbroke2]

Just wondering why you were advised to leave your house after you filed the BK. We converted to a 7 in November and according to the mortgage company, we still have a few months left. I'm assuming yours as ours is going through the formal foreclosure process even if you surrendered your home in the BK like we did. I'm glad we didn't leave so soon after we filed because we have saved up a ton more cash this way and we didn't have to pull the kids out of school during the year.

[debbie42]

I keep wondering that myself...the bk lawyers I used (I have friends who used them too, same thing) said in FL we legally have to be out within 60 days of file date if we do not intend to keep the house. We had to sign something saying we would as well. It would have been nice to save a year's worth of mortgage payments/rent...but we did what we thought we were supposed to do, was easy to get a rental home with our credit still intact too.