New Jersey Evictions, Foreclosures, Sheriff Sales and Utility Shutoffs - Part 2

Transcript

good afternoon everybody and welcome to our weekly facebook live program um we did one last week at two o'clock and this week is the information that we had to talk about last week we thought was so important that we wanted to kind of reiterate it today um and fundamentally what we're talking about here is the end of the year which is rapidly approaching it was the end of the morit a lot of moratoriums like um in new jersey so at the end of the year people could be evicted at the end of the year and and right now the sheriffs are having sheriff's sales and um utility shutoffs would be another thing that that's going to start real soon that moratorium stopped at the end of the year we'll stop at the end of the year uh how many days from now well it depends when people are watching this jeff because we have a library of all sorts of videos so they can be watching this on january 2nd and then you are correct the utility shut off has ended right or they could be watching it on december 30th in which case the utility shut off will begin yeah so we just we wanted to it's just so important uh for you to know what you can do or what you need to do to deal with these these situations that we're going to go through today and that we went through last week that's that's right and um the theme of this presentation among others is that if you do have a situation where you've been sued a lot of the lawsuits now will go forward and it's up to you to do just what the creditor has done which is to hire a lawyer yourself whenever you receive a summons and complaint it's very very important that you hire a lawyer now some of us may have been um not as diligent in retaining counsel when being sued but there's been very little consequences during the past year and a half or so of this pandemic era but that those days are over as jeff just said foreclosures are revving up and landlord tenant hearings are revving up along with actual physical evictions so if you have been that where do you keep your mail at home jeff i like this thing as soon as you walk in we kind of put it in and you get to it when you get to it kind of thing you know and uh most people have that you kind of get to it when you get to it or i bring it into the office and it's all organized well that's very nice and my legal work is like that too but at home many of us have these drawers where we put things in and then we pull out this weekend is your weekend to pull everything out because you really need to address financial financial troubles that you're having and if you've been sued if you have a summons and complaint you need to call a lawyer right away absolutely um why don't we talk about foreclosures first eric just sure a little bit the uh mortgage companies um in the united states about 70 of the mortgage companies are backed by federal funding and so i mean we're talking about um fannie mae freddie mac uh va fha usda and so on and so on it's a lot of letters yeah maybe the cia even has a special deal there's the icia um but so 70 uh backed by the government and therefore they have to cut do what the government tells them when it comes to things that have happened during the pandemic like okay you can't do foreclosures now until such and such a date you have to do this you have to do that the other 30 percent are all not government funded there might be a small mortgage company small bank something like that um there's been very little regulation on those mortgage companies but in new jersey even though that 30 percent probably could have continued to do things they really held off and i think they did in deference to what was obviously the governor's wishes about what should happen with um foreclosures but also the things that the government-backed mortgage companies were receiving from uh headquarters in washington hq yeah the big hq and um but now we're over that stuff it's gone there's no more foreclosure moratoriums uh so all the mortgage companies are going for foreclosures and i don't you know i have no idea what order they're going to do things in they may pick up where they left off so to start where they were at the beginning the pandemic and go forward i just don't know a lot of the mortgage companies may have agreed to some type of forbearance that doesn't mean forbearance means there for right now you don't have to pay your mortgage or for the last six months or last year or whatever but now now that stuff's over with and it's all due and how it gets paid back now is really up to the mortgage company are they going to be nice to you and let you put the uh what the forbearance amount on the end of the mortgage loan or are they just going to say all right mr smith 12 months worth of mortgage let me get my calculator out here and let me 2012 and i can tell you what that adds up two times 12 a lot yeah and that's right jeff that's a point that we've we talked to clients about all the time because this is a new phenomenon that the mortgage company would write to you and say you don't have to pay and they put this fancy word forbearance but forbearance is not forgiveness and that's what we need to emphasize so there's a couple things we can do when we get involved in a case first of all we can initiate conversations with the mortgage company about a more formal deal rewriting the loan putting the mortgage in the pat whether you're forbearance amount in the past that's what jeff talked about we could also talk about taking the arrears and working on a plan in which we'd repay the client would repay the arrears over five years without interest without penalties and the mortgage company will accept regular monthly payments thereafter both of those are generally under chapter 13 bankruptcies remember when you file bankruptcy there's an immediate automatic stay which is a fancy legal word for stop all collection actions no phone calls no letters no threats no foreclosures evictions sheriff's sales everything stopped that's why when i started this discussion today my part i was talking about if you've gotten sued you got have to talk to a lawyer to either answer the complaint or file a bankruptcy or a couple things you can consider to stop the action to stay the action okay and then if you're behind with your mortgage you can have an iced tea you can read the newspapers and still read the newspaper can relax because we're going to work with you to get a plan for how you want to how you are going to save your house if that's your wishes yes so the foreclosure department has started hq says it's okay if you're behind with your mortgage confirm with your mortgage company that they put it at the end confirm with the mortgage company that there's a payment arrangement in place but if they're not working with you and they want to it's called new jersey elsewhere foreclose your home which means take back their collateral for the loan because the loan's in default and your collateral's your home and talk to a lawyer about stopping the foreclosure and that's why we're here i've been doing this for how long 35 years 36 years i don't know it works the case has really worked absolutely they do and and uh you've got to do something if you want to keep your home and even if you don't you need to think about if you if you just walk away from the house the mortgage company is going to send you a letter one day that says okay we finally sold your house to somebody and you have a 200 000 deficiency that you owe us wow or what about the other thing they do so oh yeah well okay everybody remember the other thing they do for sure if they say all right it's 200 000 but we're feeling really good today we're in good spirits today and today's your lucky day so what we're going to do is we're going to forgive this amount that's very good it's great here's the problem to do that effectively they've got to send a notice to the irs that they did it really it's kind of uh they're setting off ordinary income with forgiveness of this debt and they tell the irs about it and then you're going to get a little note from the irs that you own taxes on the 200 000 and you owe state taxes on the 200 000 because the irs sees forgiveness of debt the same as realization of income i hope you all understood that because that is so true we have so many people who come in here and they and the credit card companies quit on them they get a 10.99 it's actually a 10.99 1098 just like you would if you were self-employed you worked for doordash they send you a 1099. some other letter attached to it yeah and they said xb's right there are some letters at the end and you owe taxes on this forgiveness if that's terrible now fortunately the bankruptcy code and the internal revenue service code were not written in silos they were written in conjunction with each other and we've we've spoken about taxes in the past but this is important to emphasize based about what we're talking about today forgiveness of debt through a bankruptcy is a non-taxable event that's right that's right so very very important if you receive any of those 1090 99s with um the fancy letters which is forgiveness of debt income again that's another opportunity to speak to an accountant but speak to a bankruptcy attorney about that because we can make that um phantom income go away or talk to us even sooner you know if you decide you're going to wait walk away from your home please come and see us so we can talk to you about all this stuff because we don't want you getting that thing from the irs could be eric frankly if they get that 1099 it could be too late yeah that we could for us to do anything other than have him paid the irs through the chapter 13 yeah maybe a minute yeah you know sixty thousand dollars that's very complicated yeah think about that two hundred thousand dollars is sixty thousand dollars yeah wow that was pretty scary yeah really really is so basically i'm gonna let jeff continue on to the next topic but basically we're here as your bankruptcy attorneys if you're behind with your home mortgage i talked a little bit about the fact that we could do a plan to catch you up and jeff just talked about the fact that if you want to walk away and there's all sorts of reasons why you'd want to walk away your neighbor's got six doberman pinterest your school system is not good you're ready to move to north carolina where it's less expensive all sorts of reasons you've got to tighten things up in new jersey before you leave that's what we're here for too even if you don't want to save your house yeah that's right that's right so jeff that's foreclosures those are people who own their home yeah should we talk about sheriff's houses too that's the ultimate conclusion in a foreclosure exactly so if if you have had a foreclosure going on and you get a notice that there's a sheriff's sale again just like eric has said over and over you really need to see an attorney about that and a bankruptcy attorney would be a good kind of attorney to see to tell you what's going on because we could explain to you your alternatives if you want to stay in the house or if you want to leave and how the sheriff's sale process works and when you have to be out of the home if it comes to that and and all sort of stuff like that because because they're doing share sales again now you know that they stopped them for a long time here since the pandemic started but they're they're going they're happening and um we have people calling us every day that somebody called a day that i'm going to talk to this afternoon got a sheriff's sale on wednesday that he wants to stop yeah january 5th we we have a lot of bankruptcies to be filed january 5th a lot of share ourselves in new jersey and i would expect that would increase probably but um again it is very important to talk to a lawyer before the sheriff's cell occurs and like we've mentioned before in each of these processes if it's uh foreclosure and sheriff's sale or the land your landlord files a complaint against you and goes to court according to the bankruptcy code there's a point usually beyond which we can't help you because of the language in the bankruptcy code right so if we're talking about a sheriff's sale the sheriff's sale date the courts and the uh congress have decided is the day so if you come and see us the day after the sheriff's sale there's things that we could do right and and frankly a lot a lot more than we could with a landlord-tenant situation but uh it's not good i mean we just can't snap our fingers and get your home back for you so for a foreclosure and sheriff's sale is the day of the sheriff's sale for landlord tenants which we'll talk about it's the day of court of the landlord tenant trial they can call it there's you know usually it's not a trial the judge is there the landlord's attorneys are there and you owe the money and so the the judge signs a judgment for possession and that's the thing that triggers the bankruptcy code relief is ended we can't do anything for you but if you see us before that uh court hearing and before the judge signs that judgment then we can help you out that's exactly right jeff and of course jeff's talking in definite terms and we've been doing this a long time there are little things we do we do know how to do to help you in either situation and even if you are calling us a little bit late we can still help you and remember we can also make sure that if you're going to move anyway you have to do something about the debt you don't want to have that landlord going after you forever so there's plenty we can do even if it's after that judgment date but we really want to give you all of your options the words that kids use now jeff is give you all of your optionality i wonder if that's a real word but i hear that a lot optionality so you want all of your optionality see us before the judgment date if you are a renter see us before the sheriff's sale date if you are a homeowner and in distress exactly you want to go back to utilities jeff a little short yeah i see that it was on the bottom of the screen in it the governor's last proclamation about utilities is that i guess it was it was supposed to be three months before the end of the year or something but it just it made absolutely no sense to me he was saying okay you can't have utility shutoffs until three months before the end of the year but for the last three months beyond that you can't really have a utility shut off either because we want to give everybody a chance to work things out with the utility company right i did i think you explained it exactly right with three months to go in the year they can start utility shutoffs but those last three months they can't because they're supposed to negotiate with the consumer right right we're definitely coming to within a couple days now the end of that whole time period so utility companies would no no longer be held back by something the governor said from turning off your utilities and in new jersey if you are below a certain income amount you're not supposed to have your source of heat disconnected during the winter months uh if you're above that income amount then perhaps you can and shut up jeff i before i got married i was living in a condo and my neighbor didn't pay the water bone they shut off my water and i didn't know and you know you go and you flush the toilet and nothing happens you try to wash your hands and nothing happens you call the water company they say made a mistake we'll be out in a couple hours and you just unconsciously go to the sink to wash your hands or go get a glass of water or flush the toilet or want to take a shower to not have those basic utilities on in your house is not a good situation to come home and flick the lights and nothing happens it's terrible but we're here to help you that's what's good if your utilities have been shut off yet if you come home and the lights don't work and it's cold they probably have yeah give us a call your cell phone hopefully is charged from work give us a call we can get your lights turned on but we deal with everyone jersey city atlantic city pseg all the electric companies throughout new jersey know us we know who to call we get the electric turned on in just a spark yeah they're pretty fast they're pretty good about it they really are um water a day we'll get it turned on and we haven't had much heat uh gas issues but um we're real good with that south jersey gas ps emg all the ones up in monmouth and ocean county they deal with us really quickly and again in a day we should have the guests turned back on for you so if that's your issue call us we really can get your utilities turned back on in a day in a couple hours um water bill may be a day yeah and especially with this pandemic i what we've seen and what i would expect to see going forward is people come in not with one issue it's not just that they're behind with pseg they're behind 18 months with their landlord and 18 months in utilities which covers all the utilities that they have and they probably use credit card bills to pay things because they haven't been able to pay otherwise and they have a lot of stuff going on and generally eric and i can take care of just about everything in fact most the time we can help you with everything you've got a problem with financially there might be something or a couple things that because the bankruptcy code and so forth we can't do anything about um but we would certainly talk to you about that you would understand that we can fix the first five and the sixth one can't um but uh even even in a bankruptcy context if you can't get rid of debts or a debt you're still protected from those pers those people once the bankruptcy's filed so nothing bad is going to happen maybe you're still going to owe the student loan but during the penancy of the bankruptcy proceeding you're off limits to them they can't do anything to you they're your co-signer or you're the one who got the loan or whatever right i sometimes use this and i i hope not to embarrass or upset anyone but basically in some ways we're kind of like a diet chop and if someone comes in and they weigh 400 pounds they're not going to be able to just talk to the diet guy and leave the place wearing 200 pounds it just doesn't work like that we can get you can come in shake our hands sign some paperwork and we can get almost everything done for you in just a couple days we really can't and if your lights are off or if there's an eviction pending or if there's a sheriff's cell pending we can get it done in one day as jeff said we can't certain things child support certain taxes certain um certain things that student loans that you know it's not perfect but most people don't come in here because they're behind with child support that's their only issue and this is just what jeff was talking about the key to a successful bankruptcy is to include all bills clean everything up so you won't owe anyone any more money you're protected from the automatic by the automatic stay to stop all collection action and at the end you get your fresh start yeah the cases work jeff they sure do and and and uh another thing if you have problems like that and you come in and see us you are going to feel so much better you absolutely will because you've been for months maybe um you haven't been paying your rent and you're worried and you're worried and every night you worry and and maybe you're getting notices now from utility companies they're going to shut off your utilities and stuff like that if you come in and see us we can talk to you about exactly how we can deal with these things and so now we've got a plan for taking care of all that stuff and it's something that you can be comfortable with that you can live with and so you're not going to be up at night anymore thinking you're going to get thrown out in the street tomorrow or anything like that it'll give you a a lot of peace of mind a plan yeah that's great jeff jeff let me wish you and your family the happiest and healthiest of new year's thank you eric same to you thank you um yeah this year's almost over with so uh thanks for tuning in today if you did or if you're watching this uh you know after the showing that's fine too thank you and uh we're going to see what we're going to do with our facebook live programs we'll probably continue them to some extent but for a long time when the pandemic started we were doing stuff every week pretty much i mean we did it for 30 or 40 weeks in a row and just to try to help you all understand what's going on what just changed and things like that so be safe and god bless