Legal Question in Bankruptcy in Wisconsin

Yes, you always can send a letter to the bank authorizing them to service your mortgage normally and report it on your credit, although they may choose to ignore it. However, in order to avoid this entire issue in WI, you could have reaffirmed the mortgage in your bankruptcy (which more or less excludes that item from being affected by it in any way). There is little risk in reaffirming a first mortgage in WI, since lenders historically have rarely pursued borrowers personally for such loans here unless the mortgage also guaranteed very large business debts. Instead, if the lender is ever forced to foreclose, they settle for taking the property only, which known as an "in rem" lawsuit, even though the reaffirmation gives them other options. In an in rem suit, the bank trades a faster time frame for foreclosure for a waiver of any option to pursue the borrower personally and garnishee his or her wages if they come up short after selling the property at a foreclosure sale. Keep in mind, however, that the situation for second mortgages and other junior mortgages and liens is exactly the opposite; those creditors nearly always pursue the borrower personally, because their lien is usually wiped out due to a foreclosure by the first mortgage lender. Therefore, I rarely recommend that my bankruptcy clients reaffirm second mortgages. If the time limit for reaffirmation has expired due to your discharge having lead to routine closure of your case, you may be able to reopen your bankruptcy for purposes of the reaffirmation. However, in my opinion, this would all be needless paper pushing and expense; lenders could easily choose to service such loans normally without legal repercussion as long as they state in the credit report that they would only utilize the �in rem� option if they ever needed to foreclose. Your situation is an extremely common one and results from a hyper-technical interpretation of law by the lenders. The options may also differ in states other than WI, where claims by first lenders against borrowers personally (rather than in rem foreclosures against the property only) may be more common. My comments here are not legal advice, nor do they create an attorney client relationship between us. However, you always welcome to contact my office in order to discuss retaining me via the links on my Law Guru profile or other web search engines, assuming that a Southeastern WI (Racine) Attorney suits your needs.