BACKGROUND
Two of the biggest threats that creditors have over you are repossession and foreclosure. Those two threats lead people to bankruptcy more than everything else put together. If you are going to make an informed decision about filing bankruptcy, or if you are already in a bankruptcy and you want to understand what might have happened, or what still might happen in the future, you need to know what these words mean.
Repossession and foreclosure are like two branches of the same tree. They both refer to a creditor taking away property that was used as collateral on a loan. In some ways the two processes are very similar, but there are a few important differences. Any creditor with a lien on property can repossess or foreclose on that property, if the right situation arises. That is essentially what "lien" means; the right to take something away if something goes wrong.
There are a few different ways that a creditor can get a lien on property. If you ever bought a car, or new furniture, or major appliances, then you may have purchased it with money borrowed from a bank or a finance company, or you may have financed the purchase directly through the seller. That is what’s called a "purchase money loan," which gives the creditor the strongest kind of lien. This is one kind of "secured" loan or debt. The property that the creditor has a lien on can also be called the "security" for the loan. The creditor might not be the same one that you bought the thing from in the first place. Creditors have the right to sell the note to someone else, and that person then has just as strong a lien as the first creditor did. (If you paid in full with cash, no lien was ever created. Also, once the loan is paid in full the lien is dissolved.)
If you ever borrowed money and used property that you already owned as collateral on that loan, that is a "non-purchase money loan." This is also a secured debt (the creditor has a lien on the collateral), but it brings up one of the biggest differences between debts secured by real estate and debts secured by personal property (anything else but real estate). If the collateral is real estate, and if the creditor follows all of the proper procedures, then he has a "mortgage," which is one of the strongest types of liens. On the other hand, if the collateral is "household goods," then all or parts of the lien can be "avoided" (dissolved) in bankruptcy. (Without bankruptcy the creditor’s lien is just as valid as a mortgage.)
So far we have only talked about voluntary, or consensual, liens. There are also such things as involuntary liens. The two most common kinds of involuntary liens are judgment liens and tax liens.
A judgment lien happens when a judge orders you to pay money to someone else, usually after a lawsuit. The person who sued you can then register that court order with the county. That gives him a general lien on any real estate that you might own. If he can show that he has not been able to collect on that judgment by garnishing your paycheck or your bank account, or by collecting from you directly, then he has the right to force the sale of your real estate. This doesn’t happen very often, mostly because the property has to sell for enough to pay off any mortgages or liens that already existed, plus any city or county property tax that is owed. Judgment liens can often be avoided (dissolved) in bankruptcy.
A tax lien could be imposed by the IRS, or any branch of city, county or state government. It could be imposed by a judge, or by any proper taxing agency. Once a tax lien is in place, it becomes very much like a mortgage, and it cannot be avoided in bankruptcy. A tax lien cannot be imposed after the bankruptcy has been filed.
REPOSSESSION
When a creditor exercises his lien rights by taking property (other than real estate) away from you, it is called "repossession." We usually think of cars when we think of repossession, and that is the most common type of repossession, but it can also apply to furniture, appliances, electronics, and anything else that you may have used as collateral. Cars are repossessed more often because they are more valuable, and because they are often out in the open, where the repo man can get to them.
If you default on your payments, a secured creditor (other than a mortgage holder) has the immediate right to repossess the collateral without warning, as long as he can find it and get to it. He can come into your yard, or driveway, or into the public garage at your workplace. He can follow you to the grocery store and take your car out of the parking lot. There is a good program that runs on the Discovery Channel called "The Repossessors" about repo men. You would be amazed at how patient and persistent those guys can be. They will wait and watch you for days, if that’s what it takes.
The only rule is that the creditor (or his repo man) cannot "breach the peace" in the process of taking the property. For instance, he cannot pick or break a lock, or break through a door or a gate, or get into a fight with you. He has to be able to take the property without damaging or moving any other property. Some people have even been known to chain their car to a tree to keep the repo man from taking it. (If your car disappears, the first thing you should do is call the police. The repo man is required to notify the police as soon as he takes your car, so the police won’t have to waste their time looking for a car that wasn’t really stolen.)
The same basic rules apply whether you are talking about a car, or a refrigerator, or anything else (except real estate). But it is a lot easier to get a car out of your driveway than it is to try to get the refrigerator out of your house. On top of that, the car is probably worth a lot more than the frig, so creditors are more likely to go after cars than anything else. (The rest of this section will use cars as an example, but the same rules apply to any other kind of personal property.) The more valuable the property is, the more likely they are to try to take it away, and the sooner they will try it.
If the repo man can’t find the property, sooner or later the creditor will go to court and get an order requiring you to give the property back to them. Don’t ignore that court order. The creditor can’t send you to jail, but the judge can.
Filing a bankruptcy stops all repossession efforts. If the repossession has already happened, you can get the property back by filing a Chapter 13, as long as the property has not been sold, and assuming the arithmetic works out (and it usually does).
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE REPO
Once the creditor has the car (or whatever it was that was repossessed), he has to send you a letter telling you that he took it, how much it will cost you to get it back, and when it is going to be sold. That is your deadline. Once it’s sold, it’s gone forever. The letter will be addressed to the last address that they have on you. It is not their responsibility to keep up with you. If they don’t have your current address, you may never even see the letter.
The car must be sold at a "commercially reasonable sale." That means that they cannot just give the car away, or sell it to themselves for next-to-nothing. They have to at least try to sell it for as much as anyone could normally get in that situation. Typically, they will hold an auction where a few people might bid as much as the wholesale price, but never more. Wholesale price is a lot less than what you would normally pay. It’s the price that car dealers sell cars to each other for. It is often the trade-in price that you get from the dealer for your old car when you buy a new car from them.
Many people think that once their car has been repossessed and sold, that’s the end of it. That might be the case, but most of the time people owe more on the car than it is worth. For example, your car might be worth $10,000.00, but you might owe $15,000.00. We call that being "upside down" on the car. If the creditor sells it at auction for $10,000.00, you still owe him the other $5,000.00. The papers that you signed when you first bought the car say that, and a lot more.
The remaining debt is no longer secured, but they can still sue you for that money, and they almost always will, unless you work something out with them before it gets to that point, or unless you file bankruptcy in the meantime. You will also have to pay them for all of their court costs and attorney fees, which are typically one-third of whatever the balance is. In this example, that would add almost $2,000.00 to the $5,000.00 debt. They will get a judgment against you for roughly $7,000.00, and they will then try to garnish your paycheck, go after your bank account, or take any other legal collection action.
So you not only lose your car; you still have to pay for part of it, too. It doesn’t always happen exactly like this, but it usually does. If you go to General Sessions court at 140 Adams Ave. any day of the week, there will be at least one courtroom where most of the docket is taken up with cases involving car dealers taking judgment against people for cars that were repossessed, or even voluntarily returned. (Voluntarily returning a car is usually treated exactly like a repo.) Most of those people had no idea that they could still be sued after the creditor had taken the car back.
FORECLOSURE
The word "foreclosure" is only used when talking about real estate. We usually think of it as referring to your home, but it could be any land, whether or not any buildings are on that land. It could be an apartment complex, or commercial space, or farm land, or even a vacant lot. As long as we are talking about real estate, the repossession process is called foreclosure.
In some ways foreclosure is very much like repossession of personal property, but there are a few very important differences. The biggest difference is that a foreclosure has to follow a very specific process. A car can be snatched from your driveway at one minute after midnight of the day they your missed payment was due, but your house can only be taken away after the mortgage company notifies you by certified mail, posts a notice in a local newspaper for three weeks in a row, and holds a public auction on the courthouse steps.
The whole process takes at least a month, if not two. That gives you time to make plans, and to take action. If you can come up with the money to bring the mortgage up to date at any time before the auction, you will stop the auction and keep the house. The amount of money will be a lot more than just the missed payments. You will also have to pay late fees, and the mortgage companies foreclosure expenses and attorney fees, all of which will add at least several hundred dollars to the total, if not a lot more. They will only accept the full amount; not a penny less. If you send them a check for less than the full amount, they will just send it back.
Once the auction sale is over, the only way to get the house back would be to buy it back from the mortgage company, or whoever bought it at auction. (It will usually be one of the mortgage holders.) Even if they made a mistake in the foreclosure process, such as not properly notifying you by certified mail, it is practically impossible to un-do a foreclosure. The only real exception would be if you could prove that someone committed fraud. Even then, you might not get the house back. Your best hope could be to sue the person who defrauded you. The moral of this story is to not wait until the last minute to try to do something about it.
Anyone with a lien on your real estate can foreclose. It could be the first mortgage, or the second or third, or it could be someone who took a judgment against you. Most of the time the oldest liens are first in line, and the next oldest is second, and so on. If there is a first mortgage, it will be first in line, even if that mortgage was sold to someone else after another lien was created.
As a practical matter, the person who forecloses will usually be whoever is first in line. If the first mortgage has not been paid off, they will be first in line, and they are most likely to be the ones who are foreclosing. The reason for that is that the first mortgage has to be paid in full before any money goes to the second, and the second has to be paid in full before anything goes to the third, etc. There is no guarantee that the second and third will get anything at all. If they want to protect themselves, they have to show up at the foreclosure sale and be ready to pay off everyone in front of them in full, on the spot. If the property is not worth that much, they are not going to do that.
Bankruptcy will stop a foreclosure cold. As long as the petition is filed before the auction sale is finalized, the foreclosure stops. Even if the auctioneer never hears about the bankruptcy filing and goes through with the auction, the sale is still void; as though it never happened.
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER THE FORECLOSURE
The things that happen after a foreclosure are very much like what happens after a repossession. As far as you are concerned, the property is gone. But there is one important legal difference, and one or two practical differences.
It is unusual for a first mortgage to be upside down, unless you just bought the house, or the value of the property has gone way down for some reason. In other words, most of the time the foreclosure sale will bring enough money to pay off the first mortgage in full. If that happens, you don’t owe the mortgage company any more money, so they aren’t going to sue you. It is extremely unusual for the foreclosure sale to bring more than what is owed, but if that does happen, then they have to give the extra money back to you.
If there is a second mortgage, or if there is another sort of lien that is not paid off by the foreclosure sale, then that creditor still has a right to come after you. Whether they will, and exactly what they will do, depends on who the creditor is, how much money is owed, and what the nature of the lien is.
That covers the practical differences. The legal difference has to do with the eviction process. Once the foreclosure sale is complete the mortgage company or the buyer will send you a letter demanding that you leave the house immediately. But it’s a bluff. Since that is your home, you still have a constitutional property right to live there, and they can’t make you leave without a court order.
If you don’t leave voluntarily, they have to go to state court and file an eviction lawsuit (called an "F.E.D." or Forcible Entry and Detainer). They have to serve you with the lawsuit papers. If they cannot serve you personally, they can post the notice on your door. But if they don’t serve you personally, they can only get a court order for possession of the property. They can’t win a money judgment against you. Ten days after the judgment is entered they can bring the sheriff out and put you and your belongings out on the street. Don’t wait for that to happen. The whole process takes at least a month, but that month will go by faster than you can imagine.
There is much more that could be said about foreclosure and repossession, and this section will be updated regularly.. If your question has not been answered, send me an email by clicking on the following link. I do my best to answer every question.
Attorney@MemphisBankruptcyLawyer.com
