This is my first guest post in an ongoing movement I’m doing on my blog called Battling the Banks. Bringing real stories of foreclosure and informative posts from the professionals in the field to my readers.
Introducing our very own fellow blogger Kim. You can follow her on Twitter here and her blog here.
***************************************************************
You wanna talk about hell? Try moving in with your in-laws at 32. Let me tell you how it happened.
Right before I turned 30, we decided to move 50 mi away from where we lived, which put me 50 mi farther away from my work. Considering I’d been miserable at this place for 7+ years, it gave me the perfect excuse to quit. After I’d given them notice, & trained my replacement, the bottom fell out of, well, everything. I had expected to be out of work for maybe a month & that month turned into 18.
We ended up filing for bankruptcy less than a year later. We’d been living off of credit cards & my husband’s income, & we were fighting a losing battle. I was so ashamed that we’d come to this & my mother was disappointed in me. Way to kick me when I’m down, Mom…
We didn’t file for Chapter 7 because we wanted to keep the house. The lawyer figured out our budget & figured we could do this, even if I didn’t see it, so we went along with it.
With the date to our hearing getting closer & closer, I got more scared. I didn’t see how we could pay our mortgage, plus $350 to a trustee, & our bills. We were filing to make things easier on us, but this was not easy at all! If either my husband got raises, the trustee could increase the amount we payed him each month. Then there was everything that started breaking (our washer & dryer, cars, there was a giant hole in our bathroom ceiling, etc) We couldn’t do it, so we backed out.
While we were in the process of trying to figure everything out for the lawyer, hubs called Wells Fargo to find out how much we owed exactly. They couldn’t/wouldn’t tell him. They said we had to call their collector. It was funny, but he was right. They had that $ amount right on their screen when they looked up our account, but they wouldn’t help us fix it! Sure he ended up cussing them out, but, for once, I didn’t blame him.
Once we backed out of the bankruptcy, it wasn’t long before we got a notice on our door saying we needed to be out. There were 2, actually. One gave us a few days & another gave us a little over a week (I don’t remember specifics. It’s been a year, & so much has gone on since). It was a Saturday, so no one was around to help us.
On Monday, the first thing I did was call the number on the notice & they gave us a month to get out. If everything was cleaned out to their satisfaction, they were going to give us $1000 to hand over the keys. Um, yeah, that didn’t happen. They nitpicked over things that weren’t ours (came with the house) & in the end, we never got a cent from them. It was an all or nothing deal.
So here I am. I’m going to be 33 yrs old, & I live with my in-laws. I have no desire to ever own a house again (though some privacy would be fab), & I have a deep-seated hatred for Wells Fargo. I know it’s not fair to hate them as much as I do, but when I called the lawyer (paralegal, actually), even she was surprised by how quickly they were moving. And seeing as my daughter lives in constant fear losing the house we’re in, I feel my my hatred isn’t all undeserved. I know in the end it’s my fault, but if they could have worked with us to get the payments lower or something, it would have helped.
On the plus side, at least I don’t live with MY parents. There is always a silver lining. 😉
image: google
The lawyer you went to for your bankruptcy has to share some of the blame – bankruptcy is supposed to ease the process – not make it worse. Chapter 13 is supposed to take payments after income and expenses are tabulated – you tell the lawyer what your monthly expenses are and THEN the payment to the Trustee is calculated. Once in Chapter 13, if you have problems, you CAN go back to hte court and get the process re-evaluated – you could even go into Chapter 7 if that move is warranted. Chapter 7 doesn’t always mean you lose your house. You and your spouse are each allowed $15,000 in equity in the house – so if you have 30k or less in equity in your home, the bank can’t take it – besides that, you are always allowed to re-affirm the mortgage with the bank after the bankruptcy is entered. It sounds to me like you weren’t given all the facts.