The foreclosure mediation programs that the Florida Supreme Court recently ordered to be started in circuits across Florida have only recently been implemented and already the lenders are looking for ways to rip away the important rights that the Supreme Court has provided for them. The foreclosure mediation program we have implemented in the Sixth Circuit of Florida presents a real opportunity for homeowners to get a fair shake at a potential resolution to their foreclosure case, but if the directive below is implemented, far too many consumers will not have the opportunity to participate in this good program.
Please read the document carefully that is attached below:
While the terms contained within the document seem innocuous enough, please understand exactly what this is all about. The mediation order issued by the Supreme Court required that all homeowners be given the opportunity to have their case heard by an impartial mediator in a court-supervised program. The Order included an important loophole to that requirement and that is if the borrower already participated in a mediation that fulfilled most of the terms of court supervised mediation, then the lender could deny the homeowner the right to participate in court-supervised mediation.
The real problem here is that the guidelines published above, put all the control over the mediation process in the hands of the lender….a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house. It’s absurd to think that the very foreclosure mills that are under investigation by the attorney general and who are engaging in fraud and abuses in courtrooms all across the state (conduct that is theoretically at least) supervised by judges could be trusted to engage any sort of fair play in a process that is not supervised by anyone.
Fannie Mae Announcement SVC-2010-13, Mandatory Pre-Filing Mediation is nothing more than a front end assault against homeowners and exploits a loophole in the Florida Supreme Court’s Foreclosure Mediation Order
