As a founding partner at the firm Wadhwani & Shanfeld, Southern California lawyer Greg Shanfeld offers counsel to debtors from all walks of life. Mr. Shanfeld began his legal career in the year 1994, and has practiced in both California and Texas. On the website Avvo.com, he has been recognized with a rating of 8.6 Excellent. He is a graduate of UCLA and the USC Law School. To learn more information about his firm, contact the firm today.
Scott Talkov is the Founder of Talkov Law where the emphasis of his practice is in real estate, business and bankruptcy litigation. Scott founded the firm after becoming the youngest partner after six years of practice at Reid & Hellyer, APC, a law firm dating back to 1897, where Scott worked for the first decade of his legal career.
T.L. Brown Law Firm was awarded an A+ by the Better Business Bureau. Filing over 300 cases each year, Attorney Tristan Brown remains a leading bankruptcy attorney in San Diego and the Southern California area. Additionally, T.L. Brown’s immigration law practice continues to grow as the country’s immigration reform creates new paths to citizenship for immigrants. Attorney Tristan Brown obtained his Juris Doctor degree from UCLA School of Law and quickly earned recognition as a leader in bankruptcy law. He was awarded "Rising Star" by Super Lawyers and “California’s Top Attorneys 2020” by America’s Best.
If you decide to proceed without an attorney, you should still learn at least a little bit about state and federal foreclosure laws. This will give you an idea of what to expect when negotiating with your lender. And if they don’t follow the law as they should, you can point it out to them and prevent them from taking advantage of you. There’s also a chance that a lender’s misstep could delay or stop the foreclosure proceeding.
In this case, there are other options you can use to help you through a foreclosure proceeding. You can handle the foreclosure on your own, set up a free consultation with an attorney, contact a free legal aid society, or look for a pro bono lawyer.
If you don’t qualify for help from a legal aid office or they don’t have the resources to help you, you can try to find an attorney who will take your case for free. Lawyers are strongly encouraged to volunteer some of their time providing free legal services to those in need. This volunteer work — also known as working pro bono — can take several forms.
To find out if you have a program or attorney in your area who might be able to take on your case for free, you can use the American Bar Association’s Free Legal Help search tool. But if you can’t find a pro bono or volunteer lawyer, there are other places to look, like your state and municipal bar associations. These are professional organizations that most attorneys join for professional development and volunteer opportunities. Depending on where you live, you should have a state bar association and maybe a city and/or county bar association.
You may also want to hire a foreclosure attorney if you’re a service member. Being in the United States armed forces doesn’t make you immune from foreclosure, but it does give you special legal rights. For example, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) limits when and how a mortgage company can foreclose on your home while you’re on active duty.
These programs can include clinics for those who need help with their foreclosures. There might also be attorneys in private practice who’re willing to take a foreclosure case at no charge.
But it can also be very expensive. The only real question is if the foreclosure attorney’s services are worth the cost. Many homeowners who are facing foreclosure don’t have the funds to hire an attorney to represent them. Luckily, there are several ways to get the legal services of a foreclosure lawyer for free. These include free consultations, legal aid offices, and pro bono work.
California, like most western states, has a “non-judicial” foreclosure system, in which a trustee sends a series of legal notices to the homeowner and, eventually, seizes the property without any court intervention. Once the non-judicial sale takes place, it terminates most legal rights the homeowner has in the property, and the property is transferred either to the lender or a third-party purchaser. The more behind the homeowner is on payments, the more likely their home may be taken.
The amount of time foreclosure takes can vary greatly . In any case, foreclosure is a complex and often unpredictable process, and guidance from skilled attorneys can greatly improve your likelihood of keeping your home.
McFarlin LLP offers free consultations to prospective clients, so contact us online or call (949) 570-5025 to get started today.
A mortgage lender has four (4) years to file a foreclosure lawsuit against you, should you fail to make your mortgage payments on time. The four years of allotted time begins whenever you miss a mortgage payment, however, so does the window of opportunity for a lender to file against you can actually be much larger than it seems.