Several Florida judges said their job is not to advocate for homeowners or investigate the accuracy of documents. Courts depend on homeowners or their attorneys to raise objections, they said.
"We're processing thousands of cases where no one is really contesting them, and in those instances, something like that just would not be brought to our attention," said W. Douglas Baird, a judge in Clearwater. "It's not a situation where the courts have the ability to go through every document that's filed and challenge and question those documents."
Save Her Home
West, the Jensen Beach homeowner fighting to save her home, has a Nov. 4 hearing in Stuart, Florida, where lender Deutsche Bank AG may seek approval of a foreclosure, she said. Deutsche Bank is the trustee representing holders of mortgage-backed securities, according to court filings.
She and her husband, Tim, said they plan to seek a postponement of the hearing to give them time to question two individuals who signed relevant affidavits.
Four employees of Lender Processing Services signed assignments transferring West's mortgage, according to an affidavit submitted on her behalf by Lynn Szymoniak, a West Palm Beach attorney. They signed the documents as officers of American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. and Option One Mortgage Corp. even though they were actually employed by Lender Processing Services, according to Szymoniak's affidavit.
Signed And Notarized
These assignments were signed and notarized more than a year after Deutsche Bank filed the foreclosure suit. For that reason, the Wests question whether the bank has the legal right to file a lawsuit seeking foreclosure. Scott Helfman, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, declined to comment.
They signed "thousands of documents each week as needed in foreclosure cases, without any personal knowledge of the documents, often without any authority from the entities they claimed to be their employers and, in most cases, without ever reading such documents," Szymoniak claimed in court papers.
Kersch, Jacksonville-based Lender Processing's spokeswoman, said in a statement that its subsidiary, Docx, executed the documents and that "it had proper authority and review processes in place."
West and her husband said they received a foreclosure notice in March 2007 after Option One Mortgage Corp. allegedly refused their payments. Deutsche Bank claims the Wests owe a total of $541,925.02 in principal, fees and interest, according to court papers. The home is worth about $200,000, she said.
Fixed-Rate Mortgage
In 2005, the couple tried to refinance by getting a fixed-rate mortgage to replace an adjustable-rate one. According to West, Option One said it was willing to provide a fixed-rate loan. When the couple went to sign the paperwork, West alleged that Option One, which is now part of American Home Mortgage, changed the terms of the loan to an interest-only mortgage for five years. West claimed she was subsequently threatened with a lawsuit by an unidentified title insurance company employee if she didn't accept that deal.