Foreclosure Defense Attorney in Ridgewood, NY (Served with Papers? Start Here)

Ridgewood's rowhouses and small multifamily buildings are owned by working families who took the pandemic forbearance in large numbers when the restaurants, shops and job sites they depended on closed. Forbearance was easy to get; the exit was where the trouble started. Servicers sent letters stating that the forbearance had ended and that the full deferred balance was due, or that the borrower must reinstate to avoid foreclosure, and families who could resume their regular payment but could not produce twelve or eighteen months of payments at once assumed they had no option and stopped paying altogether. Others were placed in a repayment plan that added the deferred months on top of the regular payment, producing a figure that was never affordable, and defaulted within a few months.

Neither outcome was lawful for most Ridgewood loans. Banking Law 9-x, enacted in 2020 and applied to servicers regulated by the New York Department of Financial Services, required forbearance of up to 180 days with a further 180-day extension, and at the end of it required the servicer to offer, in order of the borrower's preference, an extension of the loan term by the forbearance period with no additional interest, a deferral of the forborne amount as a non-interest-bearing balloon due at maturity or payoff, or a loan modification; only if the borrower could not afford any of those could the servicer treat the account as delinquent, and a lump-sum demand was expressly prohibited. Loans owned or backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, FHA or VA, which Banking Law 9-x does not reach, were subject to parallel federal requirements: the GSE payment deferral, the FHA COVID-19 partial claim and recovery modification, and the VA deferment and refund options, each of which moved the forborne amount to the end of the loan at no interest and none of which permitted a demand for immediate repayment. A Ridgewood default built on a lump-sum demand did not have to happen, and the court attorney referee in Jamaica will want to know why it did.

The record is usually clear, because forbearance was administered by letter and portal message. The Ridgewood homeowner has, or can obtain through a request for information under Regulation X, the forbearance approval, each extension, the end-of-forbearance letter, the options it described and the ones it omitted, and the payment history showing what was paid and when. Where the exit letter demanded a lump sum, offered only a repayment plan, or required a full modification application for a borrower who could simply resume payments, the servicer departed from Banking Law 9-x or the applicable federal program, and the departure is documented in its own correspondence.

I put that record in front of the servicer in a written notice of error and, where the servicer is DFS-regulated, in a complaint to the Department of Financial Services, which enforces Banking Law 9-x directly and has required servicers to reverse defaults and offer the deferral retroactively. In the foreclosure, the answer pleads the mishandled forbearance as a defense to the default and the amount claimed, and the conference part on Sutphin Boulevard is where the remedy is pressed: the deferral of the forborne months to the end of the loan at no interest, the reinstatement of the regular payment going forward, and the reversal of the late fees, default interest and foreclosure costs that accrued on a default the servicer manufactured. A servicer that refuses to consider the exit it was legally bound to offer is not negotiating in good faith under CPLR 3408(f), and Queens justices have tolled interest for exactly that. Where the household's income has also fallen since 2020, the same conference produces a modification that capitalizes the arrears on a corrected figure. The forbearance was supposed to be a bridge; the law says the servicer had to build the far side of it.

Ridgewood straddles the Brooklyn border, and homeowners with a Brooklyn mailing history or a Bushwick commute sometimes assume their case belongs in Kings County. Venue follows the property, and a Ridgewood address in ZIP code 11385 is Queens, so the case is heard at the Sutphin Boulevard courthouse in Jamaica; a lender that files in Brooklyn has filed in the wrong county. I have practiced foreclosure defense for 27 years, and the Queens conference part has handled the wave of post-forbearance defaults with an understanding that many of them should never have occurred.

The court attorney referees in the conference part run the CPLR 3408 conferences for owner-occupied Ridgewood homes, and in a forbearance case they ask the servicer to produce the end-of-forbearance correspondence and to explain why the deferral was not offered; a servicer without an answer is recorded for lack of good faith. The assigned justices decide standing, RPAPL 1304 and 1306, CPLR 213(4) and the amount due, and have reduced the debt by the fees and interest a mishandled forbearance generated. A contested Ridgewood case runs two to four years from the summons to any auction, and a forbearance case properly presented usually resolves in the conference part with a deferral and a reinstated payment long before that. An unanswered case, where the family assumes the lump-sum demand was legitimate and stops appearing, reaches auction in about a year, with the equity in a Ridgewood rowhouse sold at a discount to pay a default the law did not permit.

The appellate court for Jamaica requires strict RPAPL 1304 compliance and puts the burden on the lender to prove the mailing through a witness who knows it or the routine behind it. Post-forbearance notices carry a distinctive defect: the statute requires the notice to state the amount the borrower must pay to cure the default, and on a Ridgewood loan where the forborne months should have been deferred, the true cure amount is the regular payments missed after the forbearance ended, not the entire forborne balance. A notice demanding the whole sum states a cure figure the law did not permit the servicer to require. Notices to two borrowers in one envelope, notices with added collection language, wrong-county counselor lists and form mailing affidavits have each been rejected on appeal from Queens, and a notice sent while the borrower was still in an approved forbearance is premature.

RPAPL 1306 requires the Ridgewood lender to file the notice electronically with the Department of Financial Services within three business days of mailing and to prove it with the confirmation. Where either statute fails, the Ridgewood case is dismissed without prejudice and the lender must restart the 90-day process with a correct cure figure, which for a family that can resume its regular payment often means the case never returns. On a loan accelerated in an earlier abandoned action the restart may also fall outside the six years CPLR 213(4) allows, with the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act, effective December 30, 2022, barring the lender from claiming the acceleration was revoked. I check the 90-day notice's cure figure against the forbearance record on every Ridgewood file.

The forbearance defense belongs in the answer, not only in the conference, because an answer that pleads it puts the servicer's compliance with Banking Law 9-x or the federal program squarely at issue on any summary judgment motion and supports the amount-due objection at the RPAPL 1321 reference. The answer pleads standing first or it is waived, the six-year limitations period as an affirmative defense, the RPAPL 1304 and 1306 conditions precedent including the misstated cure amount, and a specific denial of the amount claimed that identifies the forborne months, the fees and the default interest that should not have accrued. It states that the Ridgewood owner occupies the home so the CPLR 3408 conference is mandatory, and it may counterclaim under RESPA where notices of error went unanswered.

Substituted service is complete ten days after the affidavit is filed and the 30 days run from then; a written stipulation from the plaintiff's attorney extends the deadline and a promise from the servicer's forbearance department does not. Ridgewood families who believed the lump-sum demand and stopped paying sometimes also stop opening mail, and the summons goes unanswered; a default forfeits every defense, including the forbearance one, and moves the house toward auction in about a year. A missed deadline is addressed by a CPLR 3012(d) or 5015 motion with a reasonable excuse and a meritorious defense, and a servicer's unlawful lump-sum demand is a meritorious defense that Queens justices have recognized, but the motion costs time and money that a timely answer does not.

For most Ridgewood homeowners in a post-forbearance case the right outcome is the one the law required in the first place: the forborne months moved to the end of the loan as a non-interest-bearing deferral, the regular payment resumed, and the fees and default interest reversed. Where the household resumed payments after the forbearance and fell behind only later, the deferral is combined with a reinstatement of the months actually missed or a modification that capitalizes them on a corrected figure. Where income has not recovered, the modification application goes in through the conference part on Sutphin Boulevard with a term extension, rate reduction and principal deferral available, and FHA borrowers may combine a partial claim with a recovery modification. The servicer's obligation to have offered these exits in 2021 is leverage at every stage.

For the Ridgewood owner who is leaving, a sale while the case is pending pays the lender at closing and keeps the equity, and Ridgewood's rowhouses and two-family buildings sell quickly at prices that have risen sharply since the pandemic; the payoff must be corrected first so that the unlawful fees do not come out of the seller's proceeds. An auction is the worst result for Ridgewood equity, with a discounted price, default interest and fees deducted first, and any surplus held by the Queens County Clerk until someone files under RPAPL 1361. On the rare underwater Ridgewood loan a short sale requires the lender's consent and a written RPAPL 1371 deficiency waiver. A family that did what the government told it to do during the pandemic, and took the forbearance it was offered, should not lose its home because the servicer ignored the second half of the deal.