Hi fbresnah, Before you step in the bucket of personal bankruptcy, I'd urge you to determine what you REALLY expect to get out of it. Bankruptcy is an effective tool for protecting income producing assets (like business inventory, machinery, and investments) from being siezed by creditors, thereby preventing any possibility of recovery. Many (most?) people who use personal bankruptcy have no income producing assets to protect, and thus take a much worse medicine than the problem they are actually addressing. Also, most folks who use personal bankruptcy are primarily attempting to "stop the noise" of the creditors & collectors who are relentlessly harrassing & pursuing them. If you fall into the category of those who have no income producing assets to protect, you can often get FAR better results, with FAR fewer negative side effects by using alternative strategies. Ken and I have gone from intense adversaries in our opinions to what I believe is allies in the concern for the common man who gets stuck in the mechanism of the public credit game. I know that at his core he cares deeply about people, and I think he knows that about me too. Together (or not exactly together, sometimes,) we've dived deep into various aspects of this topic... and some great stuff has come out of it. I'd invite you to surf a few of the following threads. Some examples of misery sustained, and misery conquered! http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/finance/msg0914195427209.html?4 http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/finance/msg081156017751.html?15 http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/finance/msg1122145213469.html?49 http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/finance/msg0811432230158.html?29 http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/finance/msg010459412351.html?5 All the best to you with your challenges, Dave

Residential foreclosures 'can' be interesting & a bit exciting; but, it was the commercial ones that always kept me at the bank late with my calculator. I once shut down & foreclosed on a new Chevy/Buick dealership who had been commiting fraud & was out of floorplan with GMAC. In other words, he'd been 'cooking the books' to GMAC. When the originating loan officer came slithering into my office with the files loaded on a cart I knew it was going to be a long week! It took me days just to figure out what we had mortgages on, what was covered under our UCCs, & what personal property we'd liened as secondary collateral. In the end, I had all of the parts inventory, the land/buildings of the dealership, the personal residence of the dealer, his second home in a resort area, and a third lien on his first-born son! lol I arranged a 'sting' operation with the Sheriff & we entered the dealership by surprise shutting him down on the spot. He was taken away, under arrest, by the Sheriff. I was left operating the dealership for the rest of the day! At 6:00 p.m., I ordered all of the doors locked & the "Closed" signs put up, called all of the employees into the showroom & gave them the bad news that they no longer had a job except for half a dozen I needed for a week to help me figure out where everything was. There were huge environmental issues with the property because the EPA regs hadn't been followed for all of the used oil, etc. coming from the repair shop. About 3-months after I shut the place down, I held a 3-day auction for all of the parts inventory. We went 12-hours/day for 3 straight days! I was pooped. We tried to sell most everything in lots but eventually it was one tire at a time & one bin of bolts at a gavel. I had about 1,000 people at the auction & had to make arrangements for an ambulance/fire truck to be on-site in case somebody got faint from what they'd just paid! :) Then, after all of the 'stuff' was gone I still had to get rid of the property. Because of the environmental issues the foreclosure auction was a dud & I ended up bidding it in to REO. Undaunted, and being responsible for unloading that dog for the bank...I started making phone calls. After terse negotiations that continued over about a year period of time, I sold it to a multi-conglomerate & they built a national chain restaurant that we're all familar with on the site. Then, had to evict the man's poor family from their home of over 40 years & foreclose it. I took everything they owned (except that first-born son who was a JD & I didn't think he would bring much in the open market!). The borrower had signed a personal guarantee so I even took their boat, jet skis, even the lawn tractor. I was relentless over the course of 12-18 months. My borrower's still in the slammer for bank fraud...plus GM got him crimmally as well. He'll be out soon & I'm very glad I don't live in the same area anymore because I'm quite certain he's not my friend. But, gosh...he could have avoided the entire sorrid affair by just coming into the bank & saying, "Help, sales are down!" Instead, he chose to commit fraud. Do the crime, do the time. It's a good lesson for the Forum though. If anybody reading these threads is one of those homeowners who's having trouble with an ARM...go talk to your lender. Don't wait until you're 90-days delinquent & they don't have as many options to help you. /t

Okay, now that we've established that legislators make laws, the judicial system interprets and applies law to specific situations, and a rigorous appeals process is in place for those who don't like judges' rulings, I thought it might be interesting to learn a bit more about the treatment of mortgage debt in Chapter 13. I found this analysis of the issue on Calculated Risk. Who knew that Ch. 13 bankruptcy laws allow judges to modify all other secured debt...just not mortgages on principal residences. And up until 1978, the court could modify mortgages on principal residences? Here's an excerpt from Tanta over at Calculated Risk. "Here's the issue, in a nutshell. Until the 2005 bankruptcy reform, insolvent homeowners could choose Chapter 7 (liquidation) or Chapter 13 (repayment plan) bankruptcy. After the reform bill, for practical purposes most homeowners are limited to Chapter 13. Chapter 7 filings usually do not result in borrowers keeping their homes, although they can (if the borrower reaffirms the mortgage debt, the court accepts the reaffirmation, and the borrower has the financial capacity to continue to make mortgage payments). In most cases, the BK stay is lifted and the loan is foreclosed. You can think of Chapter 13 as itself a kind of loan modification: the court establishes a 3-5 year repayment plan for all the borrower's debts, with the unpaid remainder discharged at the end of the repayment plan period. In Chapter 13, the debtor can keep a mortgaged home, as long as he continues to make mortgage payments throughout the plan period, and makes up any past-due amounts (including fees) during the repayment period as determined by the repayment plan. If the borrower does not or cannot continue to pay the mortgage, the stay is lifted and the lender can foreclose. However, secured debts can be restructured or modified in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, and secured creditors, except the mortgage lender on a principal residence, can be subject to what is called a "cram down." This happens when the amount of the debt is greater than the value of the collateral securing it; the court reduces the value of the secured debt to the market value of the collateral, with the remainder being treated as unsecured (and subject to the same repayment plan/discharge terms as any other unsecured debt). The prohibition of court-ordered modifications for mortgages on principal residences was created in 1978; between 1978 and 1993 most bankruptcy courts interpreted the law to mean that while interest-rate reduction or term-extension modifications were not allowed, home mortgages could still be crammed down. In 1993, with Nobleman v. American Savings Bank, the Supreme Court held that the prohibition on modifications of principal-residence mortgage loans also included cram downs. The result is that borrowers who are upside down and who have toxic, high-rate mortgages are simply, in practical terms, unable to maintain their homes in Chapter 13." Here is a link that might be useful: Calculated Risk

Wow, I haven't had a chance to read thru every word of the posts ---just skimming--- but I basically agree with everyone who advises you to stand strong and don't leave: let HIM leave, let HIM clean up his own mess. He's already made it abundantly clear what he thinks of you: "the woman who takes care of my children". HE'S A B^STARD!!! I think some of his "honesty" is downright disgusting and transparently abusive, and I have to wonder if it's an intentional ploy to get you so hurt and upset that you can't deal with it and leave out of sheer anguish. Thus making things easier and convenient for him. Why else does someone rub dirt into your face by telling you such things as "he didn't love me, wasn't attracted to me anymore, had nothing for me, only stayed with me out of jealousy and desperation..." and smearing it in that he's "fallen in love" with her, and even worse: the LUST thing. Maybe it's just me and the fact that I invest a lot of my self-worth ---for better or worse--- in being an attractive woman, but the LUST for another woman thing almost stings more than an emotional affair would... I know that's a little backwards, but I also think it's pretty common for women to be EXTREMELY touchy about sex and attractiveness. He knows it, too. I'd also be tempted to respond to him, when he says things to you like: "I can't decide who I want. Do I choose the woman I am falling in love with or the woman who takes care of my children?" with "well, the woman you're so in love with now will soon be the one taking care of your children instead of me so it looks like you'll have it both ways. Can you handle that or is it too much for your object-splitting, madonna-whore complex brain to comprehend?" And also, when he says: "What is wrong with me? Why am I destroying my family over lust? That is what it is and I know it", I would say "because you're an idiot who hasn't discovered Penthouse and a bottle of lotion." Let him go enjoy a few more months of lust, then sit back and laugh as he grows tired of her while you're moving on with your life and finding a more meaningful relationship with someone far better. Make sure it's someone who makes you LAUGH.