Need Help Please: 2 Predatory Loans secured against my home. Any help, advice, guidance, to remove or significantly reduce them please 🙏
I have 2 existing liens against my primary residence for predatory loans by a pair of brothers I unfortunately dealt with at the most vulnerable point in my life. I was trying to save my business back in 2017 and I had to hire a chap 11 attorney. I was facing a foreclosure on my business property and I was out of time and the foreclosure sale was scheduled for the following day. So as a last resort I had to hire the attorney on the spot after the consult. He basically reassured me that my case was a “slam dunk” for a successful chap 11 and said I didn’t need to pay him cash as he would be able to loan me the $17,000 retainer fee by putting a lien against my personal home. I agreed and signed the retainer and the loan paperwork on the spot. After a disastrous 2 months he had done nothing but make my situation worse. As I was struggling to deal with the chap 11 process with no guidance from the attorney and I was still struggling to keep my business afloat the attorney offered me a “lifeline” because he suddenly wanted to help. About 2 months after hiring him and him receiving my financial details he offered to connect me with his brother who would be able to provide me with a loan for working capital to ensure I could keep the business going and meet the chap 11 requirements long enough for the attorney to get my plan approved. So I borrowed the amount he recommended which was $20,000. Again the brother secured it with a lien against my home. Within 1 month of that the attorney suddenly informed me that he knew the chap 11 wasn’t going to happen and said I needed to convert to a chap 7. I had no choice and did that plus needed to then file personal chap 7(with a different attorney he recommended, I know😐). As a result of all of this I lost everything including a $7m commercial property, a $5m annual business, inventory, everything except my personal home. Personally I received a full discharge in the middle of 2019 (ultimately the attorney said since I would be filing personally that he no longer needed to continue the business chap 7 and he just quit). Between the time he quit in January 2018 and May 2021 I didn’t hear a thing from either brother and I naively thought those loans were wiped out with the personal chap 7 discharge. Then in May 2021 the non-attorney brother called my wife (not me) and threatened that he was foreclosing on us because we hadn’t paid him. That’s literally the first contact we had. Again we hadn’t paid no idea this was still owed and had never received a statement, request for payment, nothing! Zero communication. I then called him immediately and explained we hadn’t paid no idea and worked out that we’d start paying $500/month. We did that for 2 years and the whole time was crediting the entire payment to the principal. Anytime I would ask about his brother he would say that he didn’t talk to him (they were fighting) and that he didn’t think his brother was pursuing collecting the loan. Then in 2023 after paying about $11k towards the balance which he said was about $30k when we started payments in 2021 we still owed about $19k and hadn’t missed a payment but he began foreclosing on us out of nowhere. When we found out and contacted him he said it was an error and he eventually got it stopped but it was weird. During the foreclosure period (1-2 months) we stopped paying until he got it fixed. Once fixed we started paying again but now he suddenly wanted $600/month. We agreed and began paying that for a few months until the end of 2023 when we suddenly got a notice of intent to foreclose from the attorney brother. First communication from him since January 2018(about 5 years). At that point we felt like we had enough of their games and we hired an attorney to sue them. Once that happened we stopped all payments. Fast forward and the lawsuit was a huge failure because the attorney brother immediately had it moved from civil state court to the bankruptcy court where he practices and is good friends with the bankruptcy judge our case was assigned to. After a ton of additional stress, attorneys fees, and disappointment the end result was the case was dismissed, and the amounts they demanded for us to prevent them foreclosing were approximately $80k for the attorney brother (original loan was $17k which I never actually received he just supposedly paid it to himself but I never received proof or anything) & the other brother demanded $85k (original loan was $20k and we had already paid approximately $14k in payments). Currently we have been paying them $500/mo (attorney brother) & $650/mo (other brother). This is mainly all interest with only about $15 each payment being applied to the principals. We are so stressed and feel defeated and taken advantage of by these predators. We learned they have a track record of doing this to other vulnerable people but no one is willing to stop them or even really cares. I know this is long but I am desperate for any advice or help or hope as the darkness my family and I have been in for the past 8-9 years is unbearable.
TL;DR
2 loans/liens wiped out in BK but liens remain and I’m forced to pay large interest payments to avoid foreclosure but loan balances are significantly higher than I think they should be.
[link] [comments]
source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1l68mhq/need_help_please_2_predatory_loans_secured/
Comments
Post a Comment