Due to a massive federal settlement regarding foreclosure abuse, checks for 4.2 million mortgage borrowers, thousands of them in Oregon and Washington, will soon be in the mail. In most cases the checks will only go a small way towards repairing the harms suffered to date.
The agreement stems from a federal investigation of the robo-signing scandal. Robo-signing was the process that allowed mortgage servicers to foreclose on Oregon and Washington homeowners without properly prepared documents.
The settlement itself will dole out nearly four billion in cash to borrowers whose primary homes were in any stage of foreclosure in 2009 or 2010 and whose mortgages were serviced by Aurora, Bank of America, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, MetLife Bank, Morgan Stanley, PNC, Sovereign, SunTrust, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo.
These payments will range widely from a few hundred dollars to over six figures, depending on how much harm a borrower potentially suffered.
One issue raised for victims in both Oregon and Washington by this settlement is whether many of the potential recipients of settlement checks who went on to file bankruptcy after they were harmed by their mortgage servicers will now be able to hold onto their checks.
If you do receive a check from the settlement and you have filed Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 Bankruptcy in the last few years, it would be wise to check in with your bankruptcy attorney to make sure that it it protected. If you have any questions at all please feel free to give me a call or set up an appointment on this website.
