What is most likely to happen if we stop making our second mortgage?

[onwards]

Sorry for all the confusion. But because I'm not an attorney and I seriously doubt anyone else in this thread is, we can only speak about our own experiances.
Someone on this thread sent me a private message and told me to contact my BK attorney and have him set me straight on Chapter 7 laws regarding 1st and 2nd mortgages.
I felt there was not a need to do so since I lived through the experiance but I did so anyway.

Via the email he replied and said in our case the lender, (BofA) waived their right on the 2nd and so it was discharged and they can never ever come after me for the balance. Period.
But, I was wrong on one point.. I thought a year ago he told me something about keeping the house and stripping away the 2nd in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy.. According to him and his recent email, you can keep the 1st and it's current terms and do away with the 2nd only in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy or the courts can choose to negotiate a lesser amount instead. Sorry for repeating that part incorrectly.

Well, unless you reaffirmed the 1st then they can never ever come after you for that balance, either.

As for stripping away - yes, that's only available in a Ch13. It's actually more flexible than that; a judge can strip away a portion of a balance down to the market value of a home, leaving a small balance instead. That's the only legal way I am aware of to force a principal writedown for a mortgage. Just make things clear, say you have a 1st for $200K, a 2nd for $50K, and a house that has a MTM value of $150K. In a Ch13, the entire second and $50K of your 1st may be "stripped away" as unsecured debt, and included in your monthly payment plan. 3-5 years later depending on your plan, those would be considered satisfied.

[sunflwrgrl13]

Just a side note from my situation: Both my 1st and 2nd are also with BOA. We stopped payments 5 months ago and haven't heard squat from them yet. We are in an active ch13 and we modified our plan in May to surrender our home (and they were notified then of our intentions to surrender). Sure is taking alot of time to even get the automatic stay lifted but I'm anticipating something anyday...

Very interesting that you haven't heard from BoA after 5mo of missing payments. BoA has our 2nd mortgage, and we have missed the last 2mo of payments (plan on filing Ch7 in Nov), and we have already received a certified letter stating that unless the payments are brought up to date by Oct. 2nd the full loan amount will become payable in full.

[pcn]

I wasn't sure about houses...is there no state in which you MUST reaffirm in order to keep the house? If not, then I agree...why would anyone reaffirm (I guess it could help build your credit faster...but that isn't worth the risk).

In AL (I forget which circuit we are in, includes part of FL & GA) the only options you have are 1) reaffirm or 2) surrender. But, because BOA's policy is to NOT do reaffirmations, you just check the reaffirm box and "ride through". So if you had BOA for both, you would in effect do a retain and pay, since you could not have signed any reaffirmation paperwork.