In Florida, in order to foreclose on your property, the owner of the mortgage (plaintiff) must file a lawsuit. At an early stage in the foreclosure action, the plaintiff will ordinarily file an application (motion) for a ‘summary judgment’ stating that the facts are not in dispute and judgment must be granted as a matter of law. Employees of the plaintiff submit sworn affidavits (statement) that support the motion. Most of the time, the court accepts these affidavits and the homeowner loses his property.
To get a foreclosure judgment, the plaintiff must prove that it owns the loan. Very often, the Plaintiff is not the original lender, but purchased your mortgage, bundled it in a pool with a billion dollars worth (not an exaggeration) of other mortgages and resold it to investors. In many cases, the original note signed by the homeowner was lost or destroyed. Proving ownership of the loan can often be difficult.
It now appears that in many cases, the affidavits and documents submitted to the court to prove ownership of the note and mortgage are false and fraudulent. The plaintiffs have come to court with documents that were either back-dated (in an attempt to prove that the plaintiff actually owns the property), signed by ‘robo-signers’ (stamped signatures that allowed the filing of a high volume of foreclosures. often with little if any oversight) or just fraud.
So what happens to the property if the Plaintiff cannot produce documents that they ‘own’ the property?Read More