Foreclosure questions

[KevFinnerty]

It seems to me that when someone talks about "foreclosure" they are quite often talking about different things which are really all part of a big "foreclosure process", involving many different events. I find this confusing since it seems to be used in different ways and refers to different things depending on what someone is referring to. So bear with me if I'm not using the right semantics below in my questions.

My bank seems to be moving towards foreclosure despite the fact that my house is an asset in my bk case, although I don't know what actually is going on.

Pretending my bk case is not a factor I want to ask some things about "foreclosure" that I don't understand.

I live in PA, a "judicial" state regarding foreclosures. My local county has a website with sheriff sales/auctions organized by monthly dates where supposedly if an auction has been scheduled for your property it will be listed there. It appears that auctions have to be scheduled 2 months in advance before they actually happen. I've checked all the various dates and still don't see anything for my house so I assume that that means the bank has not "foreclosed" yet and that I have at least 2 months before an auction happens - is that correct or am I misunderstanding something? Or can the bank take the house without going through this auction scheduling thing??

As far as I know the bank never received a "judgement" to allow them to "foreclose" because my bk halted their "foreclosure" before a judgement was given. I was notified that they filed for relief from the bk stay, but I never heard anything afterwards about them being granted relief or getting a judgement, but I'd like to know how I can find that out.

Is it possible to use pacer to read the records of a foreclosure case? I know how to use pacer to check on my bk case but can't figure out how to use it for checking on the foreclosure case. I went to the "civil" section of pacer but couldn't make head nor tail of it.

Thanks in advance.

[housepoor10]

Kevin, i do not know about the civil section of pacer, but you can go to your county clerk of courts page, then go to the civil courts docket page, and you should be able to see all from there. It may depend on the county as to whether or not this is all there, but thats how it is done.

[KevFinnerty]

Kevin, i do not know about the civil section of pacer, but you can go to your county clerk of courts page, then go to the civil courts docket page, and you should be able to see all from there. It may depend on the county as to whether or not this is all there, but thats how it is done.

Thanks for that clue, I just tried that, but there is nothing there for civil cases that I can find. Only criminal cases. I have a feeling they don't have info on the web about civil stuff for my county (??).

Maybe I'll try calling the county court office tomorrow and see what they say.

[housepoor10]

Maybe not all countys do that, but check it out. Since you are in a judicial state, I am also, they have to first file a complaint with the civil court, you will then get a certified letter summons, and also you will be personally served the summons. From there, depending upon your states judicial laws, you will have a certain amount of time to answer the summons, both to the courthouse, and also to the plaintiff. After that, they will schedule the hearing, and I would suggest you go to it. Also, if the summons does not have in it that you surrendered the home in bankruptcy, make sure to put that in your "answer" along with a copy of your BK discharge. The summons is kind of vague, so if you have any questions on answering it, contact the civil courthouse it came from and they will help you. Make sure you answer in the amount of time, or they will just get a judgement and go from there. But since it is judicial state, they HAVE to follow judicial law, and not just take it. What county are you in?

[KevFinnerty]

Maybe not all countys do that, but check it out. Since you are in a judicial state, I am also, they have to first file a complaint with the civil court, you will then get a certified letter summons, and also you will be personally served the summons. From there, depending upon your states judicial laws, you will have a certain amount of time to answer the summons, both to the courthouse, and also to the plaintiff. After that, they will schedule the hearing, and I would suggest you go to it. Also, if the summons does not have in it that you surrendered the home in bankruptcy, make sure to put that in your "answer" along with a copy of your BK discharge. The summons is kind of vague, so if you have any questions on answering it, contact the civil courthouse it came from and they will help you. Make sure you answer in the amount of time, or they will just get a judgement and go from there. But since it is judicial state, they HAVE to follow judicial law, and not just take it. What county are you in?

Thanks housepoor.

A couple interesting things to note in response to what you are saying - also I figured out an answer to my original question above.

(1) When the bank started foreclosure on me last summer I received a notice in the mail indicating that a lawsuit was filed (dated the end of August 2010). Amongst all the legal verbage in that notice there was nothing that I could see that mentioned an actual date for a court hearing.

(2) I retained the services of a bk attorney and filed for bk around this time. The bk atty's office told me the foreclosure suit would be stopped and that it didn't matter what the bank did foreclosure-wise. In fact, they first told that we should wait until after a judgement was given to get it stopped then which would give us more time, that there was no hurry with anything bk-wise. However they then turned around and told me to hurry up and get the paperwork done because they needed to file BEFORE a judgement was given. Just one example of multiple confusions that I have encountered in both my bk and foreclosure process. My bk filing was official entered as of like mid-October btw.

(3) Confusingly, I was sent a notice from the bank about my foreclosure case about 2 weeks before my bk was filed that said I was "in default" because I had "failed to enter a written appearance" and that a judgement may be entered against me. My atty as per #2 above, said this was meaningless and that my bk would stop any judgement.

(4) After my bk was filed I then received immediate notice that the bank had petitioned the court to lift the bk stay for the foreclosure case. I heard nothing else about the foreclosure case itself until last week.

(5) About a month later, in a motion in my bk case, I received a very confusing notice with all sorts of things crossed out, and handwritten scribbles on it, that appeared to say that the automatic stay for the foreclosure case had been lifted. Again though, I received NOTHING FURTHER as far as my foreclosure case goes until last week (see below).

(6) About 2 months ago, my mortgage company "notified me" that "they were notified that the property at blah blah blah was vacant and that they would be taking steps to secure it such as changing my locks unless I notified them in writing that I was still maintaining my property" (long story that I have posted about in other links). I called my bank's "property recovery division" and attempted to inform them that they were "notified" in error about my house being vacant and that I still lived there! That in itself is a long story I have discussed in other threads - but in this particular thread I want to note that I did tell the person at the bank that my house is tied up in my bk case, but he replied that "we received notice your bk case was closed" (wrong) and that "we have already received a judgement to foreclose" (I assumed this was also wrong since nobody told me that). I did speak to my atty's paralegal about this and she said something like "the bank doesn't know what they are talking about, ignore them".



In light of the recent developments with the crazy notifications about the house I live in being "vacant" I have been wanting to find out if something has changed with regards to my foreclosure unbeknownst to me. That led me to start this thread to see how I can find out what is going on. Note that my atty is ONLY representing me in the bk case so I can't really bug them about the foreclosure per se.

A few days ago I received a notice about "praecipe for voluntary substitution of party plaintiff" which appears to be something the bank does to put itself in the foreclosure lawsuit by different corporate names. What it really means I have no idea.

Now, getting back to what housepoor says above, as far as I know, there has not been any kind of court hearing about my foreclosure. Nor have I yet been notified of one for me to appear at that I am aware of.

Just today, I did find out HOW to look up information about my foreclosure case on the internet. I'll list how to do that below in case it might help anyone else, but this may only work for my state/my county.

- Go to the "office of county clerks" webpage for your county.

- Look for a link on the website for something like "County Home" and click on that.

- From the "county home" website look for a link that says something like "county departments" and click on that.

[NOTE: I was told to try to navigate there this way via COUNTY HOME but I also found a link called "county departments" right on the county clerks webpage, right next to the county home link, and can get to the county departments page that way]

- From the "county departments" webpage look for a link called "Prothonotary" and click on that.

- From the Prothonotary webpage look for a link called "Case Viewer" and click on that.

- Once on the Case Viewer webpage, there are options on the left for how to start searching the records. By default the search option in the middle of the screen is set to "Case number". Btw the options on the left for searching include "Case Number, Parcel number, Party, Attorney, or Advanced".

- The easiest way to proceed with the search is to change the search type to "Party" and enter your name. If you use the Case Number search note that you have to take the case number from your document that looks like this xx-nnnn (for example 10-12345) and change it to be yyyynnnnn, where yyyy is the YEAR that your civil case was filed, so 10-12345 becomes 201012345.


I was able to find my foreclosure case and there is nothing updated on it since last year. There is nothing indicating a judgment had been granted. It doesn't say anything even about the bank getting a relief from the bk stay. And it doesn't say anything about the praecipe filing I just got last week. So I wonder how current it is.

I'm not sure I actually understand what this all means foreclosure-wise, but I *think* it means that the bank lied to me in April when they told me they had a judgment. I think it means that in order for them to foreclose they have to file something again with the court and get a court date in which I can appear and try to mention the things housepoor said above.

Also in general I think that the bank can't schedule a sheriff's sale until after they get a judgement, so me checking the sheriff sale webpage has been a waste of time.