Foreclosure lawyer Nassau County

A lender must send a 90-day and a 30-day notice before it can foreclose. Then your options: defend while seeking a loan modification, catch up or short sell, or use Chapter 13’s five years to reinstate.

Always answer a foreclosure complaint, or you face a default judgment. Five tools covered: a careful answer, affirmative defenses like lack of standing or dual tracking, counterclaims, a motion to extend or amend, and a motion to dismiss.

A lender’s motion for summary judgment does not end your case. Opposing it can show the court real disputes, like improper notice, defective assignments or accounting errors, and can delay or even stop the foreclosure.

Being served with a foreclosure complaint gives you information to use against the lender: wrong dates and amounts, gaps in assignments and endorsements, and defective signatures or verifications. Defended properly, the case can take a long time.

At foreclosure settlement conferences, the court oversees loan modification talks with your lender. Attend: modification is the main way these cases settle, your time to answer extends to 30 days after the first conference, and it buys time.

A motion for summary judgment asks the court to rule without a trial, but foreclosures often have factual disputes: service of process, proof the 90- and 30-day notices were mailed, good faith negotiation, standing and witness knowledge.

Practical steps when a foreclosure complaint is coming: you don’t have to open the door, record service attempts on a Ring camera, photograph how papers were left, keep the full document, and note where household members were.

In Bank of New York Mellon v. Dwayne Samuels, where our office represents the homeowner, the court held FAPA applies retroactively. If an old foreclosure was dismissed, the six-year statute of limitations may now bar the lender.

If you fell behind during COVID, New York lenders are now resuming those delayed foreclosures, and pandemic protections have expired. Foreclosure here is still a judicial process: the bank must sue you in court, and you have rights.

Loans pushed on elderly or ill borrowers with inflated fees, sky-high interest or unaffordable payments may be predatory. Under New York law, a court can limit or even cancel a loan found abusive or unconscionable.

Standing means the bank must show it owned or controlled your loan when the foreclosure began. Lenders can now prove it more easily by possessing the original documents, so this defense needs real questions about their paperwork.