'Where's the Harm?': Classic question from judges to foreclosed homeowners.

Yes listeners well know that it is continuing the mantra of judges all around the nation in non-judicial and judicial foreclosure cases alike: Where is the Harm? to you the 'borrower'. Well one judge did find great harm to a party subject to a judicial foreclosure in Florida, in the case of Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. v. Riley, which case we have discussed previously on the Show. See Neil's blog post for details. Bottom line in this case the Judge found Wells Fargo had unclean hands in their behavior, and so could not proceed with the foreclosure.

As for addressing with a wider scope the issue of harm to 'borrowers' in these situations, the following types of harm are typical and often ongoing:

- Not getting a true accounting of the amount of money still owing on the alleged debt, and a proper showing of the real creditor to whom any payments are to be made;

- Not having the ability to finally reconcile the debt with the true holder of the debt; - Having an entity report to credit agencies that I am supposedly in default on a mortgage loan, where the particulars of who I owe the money to and the amount of money at issue are finessed or outright misrepresented;

- Not having the ablity to alienate, that is sell or even rent my property, without the chain of title be a chaotic mess which cannot be properly explained to potential third-party purchasers or renters;

- Being subject to continual foreclosure proceedings, threatening me with eviction, when the party pushing an auction sale and subsequent eviction has little incentive to negotiate a resolution with me if they don't in fact hold the debt they harass me over.