Eviction Moratorium Guidelines and Rent Relief Programs in Alabama

Transcript

welcome facebook live viewers my name is brad bodus and i’m an attorney with the bonnie bolas law offices and we thank you for joining us again this week uh we’re here to discuss a very important topic today and that’s how people can keep their homes um a lot of people that have gotten behind on their rent and on their mortgage payments over the last year we want to talk about options are available but just to get started the bonded voters offices are located throughout alabama or throughout mississippi and we’re in the knoxville area in tennessee and we help people with money problems and we know a lot of folks have what we’ve been through this last year are having financial problems so please during this time we’re offering absolutely free initial consultations with practicing the experienced attorney if you think you’re going to be having some money issues going forward please reach out to us be proactive don’t wait the last minute we’ll just talk through your options with you and see what we can do to help you i’m really excited today we have the managing attorney with the legal services alabama office in huntsville alabama holly ray joining us and and holly is uh well respected by the consumer bar in the state of alabama and she has particular expertise in working with people that are facing addictions and or foreclosures in fact i had the idea to do this show with holly because she’s scheduled to teach a lot of attorneys about these important issues um and a seminar that’s coming up so ali thank you for joining us welcome thank you for having me we are really we are really excited to talk to you today um i learned in preparing for today’s episode that you went to law school with one of my partners mary poole you both attended the uh jones school of law at faulkner university we did probably a million years ago well she said that you are going to be good because you’re smart so i like smart people um but why don’t you tell our viewers a little bit more about your background where where are you from originally and where you do your undergraduate work let us know a little bit about you holly sure i’ll out myself with my smart kid credential i i’m a huntsville native i grew up in the kind of ryland gurley area of huntsville i went to public school through eighth grade and then i skipped high school in its entirety i went to college when i was 14 years old at mary baldwin college in staten virginia at 16 i transferred home to auburn university graduated from auburn at 18 years old with a bachelor’s degree in health services administration took a year off went to law school at jones um so i passed the alabama stage i started law school before i was legally old enough to have a drink um that was a really bad move on my part it was stressful but i have been at legal services since that time i actually started working here as a volunteer my first year of law school um so we’re going on 17 years at legal services well holly that is just so impressive you actually skipped high school and went straight to college at age 14 14. that’s impressive but what’s more impressive to me and i’ll tell our listeners out there for you to work with legal services all over those years

you’re not practicing law to make a million dollars you’re practicing law to help people um that that’s clear in the end um i admire you uh for what you do and for what all of the attorneys with legal services do that there’s definitely a big need out there and we appreciate you thank you i i do this because i grew up in a blue collar family um my parents ran a restaurant for years i know what it’s like to get calls from debt collectors at home when you’re a last key kid at 12 years old that’s why i do what i do is everything starts at home and that’s why my job is protecting homes

you know until somebody actually has financial problems it’s just hard for them really to fathom what it’s like and what the stress of not being able to pay your bills or know that you’re going to have a home for your family is like i’m sure you’ve been through this but i i counsel folks all the time you know well up until the last year they would sit across my desk now they’re usually working with them like this these days but so many of them say i never thought i’d be talking to a bankruptcy attorney or to an attorney about an eviction or a foreclosure because people don’t expect to have money problems but when they happen the burden of stress is just really tough and we want to talk through some of these important issues with you today holly and let people know what options are available so today’s episode is going to focus on the eviction and the foreclosure protections that are available in the state of alabama and really not just alabama in most states because a lot of protections that exist are federal protections as opposed to simply protections provided by the state of alabama um so so we want to talk to people about these protections and more importantly how they can utilize them because they don’t just happen on their own necessarily um ali tell us

let’s start with the eviction moratoriums in the state of alabama and elsewhere tell us what the current laws provide and what people need to do to take advantage of the eviction prohibitions in the state of alabama right now sure so there’s a lot of misinformation going around about eviction moratoriums eviction bans what the law is what it isn’t and and certainly covid has made that 10 times more difficult because at various points over the past year we’ve had three different eviction bans in place um the you may have heard of the cares act that was the first eviction ban that has expired um at one point governor ivy had an alabama specific eviction ban that expired last summer so right now we operate under the centers for disease control the cdc’s eviction moratorium that relief has been extended several times it currently will expire at the end of june there are certain things that you have to do to qualify for that relief you need to make below 98 000 a year for a household of one or double that for a household with two earners in it most people who come to us and most residents of alabama are going to fall well below that so that’s not the one we really worry about you will need to be making good faith efforts to pay your landlord as close to market rent as you can and that has become a big pitfall in the court systems because the cdc doesn’t stop your landlord from filing an eviction the cdc acts as an affirmative defense to eviction if one is filed um and so judges have the opportunity to question you on that as to how much you’ve made impartial payments what your income is what your expenses are and why you’ve paid what you’ve paid or haven’t paid what you haven’t paid um and that gets really invasive um i tell clients that it it often feels like what people expect bankruptcy court to be like you you know you kind of expect that you’re going to have to get financially naked filing bankruptcy um it is actually worse right now in eviction court than i’ve ever seen it be in a meeting of creditors in a bankruptcy um i’ve never seen this level of invasive questioning of well how did you spend your stimulus why did you spend six hundred dollars on tires those kinds of questions um so that’s a qualifying factor you’ll also have to show some kind of income loss related to covet um that’s a pretty broad umbrella to fall under for some people it’s obvious they lost their job due to covet or their hours were cut due to covet for some people that gets a little bit more questionable um maybe you’re on social security so your income didn’t change but your expenses dramatically change due to covid that might be um having your pharmacy delivered to you and paying that fee or having your groceries delivered so you didn’t have to leave home that might be hey grandma’s house became where 13 kids were homeschooling with virtual school and i had to feed them all so my income didn’t change but man did my expenses all of those things can also play into the factors um important things to know about the cdc moratorium are two big pitfalls one it does not cover the balance that you owe it can stop you from being put out on the street for owing it but when this thing expires currently said at the end of june you still owe your landlord that balance the other pitfall that we’ve run into a lot because we’re now in the second year of the pandemic is that if your lease has expired the cdc moratorium doesn’t stop your landlord from non-renewing your lease if you’re being evicted because you’re under an expired lease the cdc doesn’t contemplate that um and so if your eviction is for non-payment of friends it can protect you but if you know that your lease came up for renewal in april or is coming up in may or june anticipate that you may get a non-renewal notice and unfortunately as it currently stands the cdc is not a defense to that so let me make sure i understand there so if the lease is expired um and for non-attorneys out there there’s really two important things here there’s the legal agreement the lease you have with your landlord uh and then there’s the court proceeding which was the eviction proceeding and you’re telling me something i didn’t know how it so police expire there is no restriction on the landlord’s ability to go forward with the eviction that is correct if your lease has expired if your contract with your landlord has expired and they gave you proper non-renewal notice which under most leases is a 30-day notice if your lease was due to expire on june the 1st and they’ve given you notice on april the 30th that is sufficient notice under most leases it’s dependent upon the terms of the contract um and so if you weren’t out by june first they could sue for eviction in early june even though the cdc hadn’t expired because not evicting based off non-payment of rent they’re evicting based off the expired lease so what i want our viewers to understand and this is very important um got to stand up and take action if you’re facing an addiction proceeding far too many people they receive court papers they receive some sort of notification and they just ignore it and don’t don’t realize they have any rights if you file a response and show up in court there are options as holly’s described here and holly you’re the expert on this so correct me if i’m wrong that there’s got to be some affirmative step taken by the individual facing conviction they can’t just ignore the eviction papers then you said they have to be able to show that they’ve made some sort of good faith effort to pay and the question certainly invasive but what i encourage viewers is now if you have some stimulus money you you have some tax refund money right now this may be one of the important areas that you need to use some of that money and not all of it but use some of it to show that you’ve made a good faith attempt to

as with the mortgages where people haven’t been able to make their payments the other important issue holly is mentioned here is the rent’s not just going away it’s still owed so at some point whether it be at the end of june when the existing moratorium expires or some future day if you want to stay in your apartment you’re going to have to figure out a way to deal with that rent payment um not only do you have any idea how many of these evictions are just going forward on a default type basis right now where people aren’t asserting their defenses based off my experience appearing in court in madison county and in we cover 13 counties out of our office so basically most of north alabama it seems to be about half um part of that is that evictions carry one of the shortest deadlines to answer to response court in any area of civil law it’s a seven calendar day deadline so if you’re served with eviction papers and eviction papers are also unique in that they don’t have to be served by a processor or sheriff they can do what’s called nail and mail they can stick it on your front door put a copy in their regular us mail and that’s sufficient from the day you see from the day they stick it on your front door you’ve got seven days to answer and that’s a really short deadline compared to i mean you have 14 days in small claims court that’s a really short deadline to answer and a lot of people just plain miss that deadline because they don’t notice it or don’t know where to go and the fact of the matter is the clerk has a checkbox form in every county of alabama to fill out an eviction defense it takes 30 seconds to go click the box but a lot of people get those and they just i call it ostrich syndrome they put their head in the sand it’s a terrifying thing to receive and they feel like they’ve run out their options when they really haven’t there’s a cornucopia of defenses to eviction and so so again people if you’re listening to this or you know somebody that might be facing eviction these protections don’t just go into effect on their own you’ve got to stand up for yourself or hire an attorney um whether it be somebody with the bonding voters offices we can help or if you can’t afford a private attorney certainly legal services does does tremendous work on behalf of consumers in alabama and you’ll see on your screen here that we have contact information for legal services and for our law firm um if you need help again be proactive reach out for help i saw something interesting uh this past week and i haven’t looked into the depth but i understand that the cdc that came out with some guidelines that suggested that if the information isn’t provided about these protections it could be a violation of the fair debt collection practices act um are you familiar with these probably within just the last week yeah that’s been in the past couple days it was the consumer financial protection bureau came out and said court attorneys needed to provide this information to tenants that they might be eligible for this assistance and how to get more help with regulations from the cfpb um some of our landlord attorneys here in north alabama literally send a letter to tenants before they evict them and it will have legal services phone number on it um some of them don’t but many of them do um others have landlords sign in madison county our judges make landlords sign an affidavit that the tenant has not provided them with a cs with a cdc declaration um trying to assert their rights under the eviction moratorium before the landlord files for eviction um so some counties are taking affirmative steps to make sure that that’s met that requirement others haven’t but i find it very interesting that they are finding a way to tie it in under fair debt collections practices act especially we sit in a federal circuit that has some interesting wiggle room on how landlord attorneys apply under that i think this is going to blow that wide open for tenants who might be taken advantage of so i want to get this message out since it’s relatively new and thanks for clarifying the federal agency that issued the guidelines holly but this is important for both attorneys that may be watching and poor individuals consumers so the fair debt collection practices act is a law that essentially says that a collector cannot be unfair uh with collection activities they can’t make misrepresentations they can’t use deceptive type communications um and what this holding or what this guidance i guess has provided is that if those if advice isn’t given to the consumer before or in the process of the eviction that they have these rights that it could be a violation of the collection practice act and there may actually be grounds to sue the collector that is pursuing the eviction proceeding i encourage both consumers and other attorneys that are watching this to be aware of that amy i want to move on from evictions to foreclosures just to kind of

bring into uh an outline here’s what we discussed that the important thing is if you’re behind on your rent don’t just ignore eviction type get papers if you have rights insert them if you can pay part of your rent any part of your rent and show up in court and be prepared to explain to the court why you’ve suffered a reduction in income and why it’s important is there anything important that i’ve missed concerning addictions sure one thing i want people to know again people tend to get ostrich syndrome it’s scary to get an eviction notice i mean i i can’t think of much scarier in terms of a legal notice that you would receive just the mere act of filing an answer keeps you in your home for about a month because once you file your answer that court case is going to get set for trial somewhere two to three weeks after you file your answer even if you lose in court you’ve still got seven days to move you can be defaulted by not filing you can lose by default you won’t have your day in court and the sheriff can come out quickly if you don’t answer in time that can happen in as little as 10 days after you’re served in some cases but if you file your answer you’ve bought yourself a month in your property there is no way to screw it up there’s a check the box form and i literally tell people check the box that says other right i want my day in court that’s enough you don’t have to have a law degree to fill it out check the box fill the form out it’s free just doing that gets you a month in your property and buys you the chance to to talk to a lawyer and see what your rights are and there are an army of free eviction defense lawyers at legal services that is one of the services we offer around the state we helped thousands of people last year keep their homes or get the time that they needed to move with dignity and without the involvement of the sheriff when that was the last ditch option but make sure you file your answer ollie that’s such great advice and to our viewers this filing an answer doesn’t just pertain to eviction proceedings certainly it’s very important because the eviction process moves so quickly seven days in alabama you have to respond but if you’re served with any kind of lawsuit it’s not a credit card you weren’t able to pay if it’s if it’s not a loan you ain’t able to pay if you don’t do anything the court will allow the creditor or your landlord to take a judgment by default against you all you have to do is file a response you’re saying you want your day in court and then you’re gonna gain at least another month and perhaps a good bit longer to stop an eviction or stop a garnishment that may result from a lawsuit stand up for yourself and there’s there are attorneys out there that will help you with this uh holly i also i i need to add this you were kind when you said um maybe the service may be insufficient or not really um the best note is that they can tack the notice on your on your door none of the attorneys that you or i know would do this but there’s also such a thing that we refer to as super service where somebody is supposed to serve you with a stomach saying it may never get served but as long as it’s reported as served to the court the court’s going to treat it as if you were served so if you’re behind in your rent be aware that your landlord may be taking some sort of action against you and pay close attention and even you know check court records if you need to to see if some sort of eviction or other lawsuit has been filed against you

let’s move on from evictions to foreclosures uh holly and for our viewers an eviction is the process of moving you out of a piece of property it’s usually going to be where you know renting property um an apartment a home you’re renting foreclosure is the process that’s utilized by a mortgage company mortgage servicer to uh to take your home from you to to terminate the mortgage to take your home from you um can you give us just a general outline highly of the uh foreclosure auditorium provisions that exist in alabama and elsewhere right now sure so the way that the current regulation gets covered on foreclosure moratoriums is a little bit different the cdc only applies to rental property but we also have federal guidance still hanging around that stops for years for people that we call them the alphabet companies and i hesitate to go throw a bunch of acronyms at people but if you have any kind of loan that touches the federal government so that’s an fha loan federal housing administration that’s a va loan veterans administration usda loan the united states department of agriculture mortgages fannie mae freddie mac any of those federally backed mortgages i think you can tell why i just call them the alphabet companies now any of those federally backed mortgages are also subject to a moratorium that i believe has now been set through the end of september and that applies to both foreclosures on primary mortgages on your home so they can’t foreclose on your loan they have to affirmatively offer you in many cases some kind of forbearance or loan modification option if you’ve suffered a loss of income due to covit it also stops ejectments so ejectments would be maybe your house was foreclosed prior to covid and they were moving into the eviction piece of the foreclosure process in alabama we are what we call a non-judicial foreclosure state you don’t have to sue someone under normal circumstances to take their home but you do have to sue them to kick them out of it and that process is called an ejectment it acts like an eviction but it’s a circuit court case so it’s a different deadline to answer than a regular eviction 30 days um and long story short it stopped all of those in the middle i have about 40 of them that just took a dead stop when this rule started last year and we the courts won’t proceed with them until they get federal guidance that allows it um so that’s kind of what’s going on with moratoriums right now in terms of foreclosures what’s important to know there is that if you have a mortgage that is not federally backed in any way which in varying parts of alabama is somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the market um those are not subject to any moratoriums right now and ejectments post-foreclosure evictions in those cases aren’t subject to a moratorium either if for example the most common ones we’re getting right now are people who have mobile home mortgages most mobile homes are not a federally backed mortgage if you have a mobile home mortgage that you’ve fallen behind in and your contract says that that you’re in default they might be entitled to repossess or to foreclose depending on how the loan is structured those don’t fall under either moratorium for evictions or foreclosures right now

so holly you made an important point and for our viewers alabama is a non-judicial foreclosure state for our viewers in mississippi or tennessee uh mississippi and tennessee are the same um there are some states for the viewers where if somebody wants to foreclose on their home for instance in florida they actually have to file a lawsuit

but in the state of alabama in mississippi and tennessee the foreclosure process is very quick all of the mortgage companies needs to do is publish a notice of the foreclosure sale in a newspaper of common circulation which is usually a section or a newspaper that nobody reads and after that they go to the courthouse they hold the sale and your ownership interest in your home is gone so like with the eviction proceeding take action um get out in front of these type proceedings and assert your rights i will say this i have seen foreclosures always grind to a halt over the last year in alabama and in mississippi and tennessee even if they are not one of the uh you said the alphabet type mortgages most have stopped but there’s a big big difference between um a moratorium and an actual modification of a mortgage or before bearings of your payments in a modification want to back up here and remind our viewers where we are and then we’re going to get into that in just a second but for anyone that may have tuned in a little bit late this is the bonnie motus facebook live and my name is brad bodus i’m an attorney i’ve been helping people with money issues in alabama in in our offices in mississippi and tennessee for over 30 years we take a lot of pride in helping people with financial problems good people have money problems and we encourage you if you’re having financial problems right now and so many people are reach shop for help our offices are offering absolutely free initial consultations we’ll do them over the phone or buy video like we are today so that you feel safe and we’ll just give you some advice so that you know what the future holds uh our facebook live episodes uh live on our facebook page and they also are here but are we on our website so if you know somebody that may not be watching this live broadcast but you think could benefit from the excellent information and advice that holly shared today please refer them back to this recording it’ll be available um you and of course contact information for both holly and legal services alabama and our firm and scroll across the bottom of your screen don’t hesitate to reach out if you need help

our last facebook live was an interesting episode we talked about um some unique and new therapies for veterans that are dealing with ptsd issues um and how these therapies can not only help people overcome those issues but avoid suicide suicide numbers are up unfortunately very significantly over the last year they’re always sad amongst veterans particularly sad and i refer you back to that episode today we have holly ray who is with legal services alabama she is the managing attorney for the huntsville location of legal services alabama she teaches attorneys all over the state of alabama about the issues we’re discussing today and that’s how to protect yourself if you’re facing an eviction or a foreclosure during the first half of this live episode we talked about how to what what rights do you have in holding off the eviction holding off of foreclosure right now specific laws provisions that have been put into place as a result of the pandemic hollywood i think determined that the existing deadline or expiration date for the eviction moratorium is june 30th and then at the end of september for the protections with respect to foreclosure people need to be affirmative they need to step up and act yes what i want to talk about next uh it goes really into the second issue here yes your rent payments are being put off right now in many instances then yes uh your mortgage payments are being put off right now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be making these payments if you can and it doesn’t mean they’re not going to become due at some point when these these deadlines expire you’re gonna have to catch up on your rent catch up on your mortgage or enter into some sort of modification with your mortgage servicer um what type of assistance can legal services alabama offer in these regards right now holly um i know you all do some bankruptcy work you like to talk about the options people have when it comes to dealing with these balances that are approved sure so there are a couple of different options with past due rent and past due mortgage specifically right now um out of the three rounds of stimulus that have come out the second round pushed millions of dollars of emergency rental assistance out into the states that further broke down certain cities and counties that had a larger population could apply for their own money and so there are millions of dollars up for grabs around the state um for tenants who are experiencing trouble with their rent due to covid due to no fault of their own in most cases um you know this is a unique situation where we’ve all been subject to a pandemic you know i like to say we’ve all been in the same storm some of us were given different votes than others this is a way to shore up the boats that that are having some problems for most of the state the website that you’re going to visit for this is era alabama.com that website is the state’s program it’s administered by the alabama housing finance authority uh through the alabama housing finance authority you can get up to a year of past due rent paid it can go back as far as last march it can also pay up to three months of forward rent at a time if you’re still experiencing covert related hardships um we know that that’s going to hit a lot of people coming forward this summer some employers still aren’t back at full capacity um we also know that some of the summer camps and some day summer daycare is coming up these kids are about to get out of school and there’s only so many slots to put them in with things like boys and girls clubs and ymcas and summer camp that’s going to knock some parents back out of the workforce that counts too so era alabama is the site to apply through the state for assistance and again it is a large amount of assistance you are seeing people receiving 15 and 16 000 in assistance through this program and it has literally millions of dollars to give you yeah i think the number is 600 and something million for the state of alabama as a whole let me clarify i want to make sure because this is so important is it era alabama.com or is it a dot org or a dot gov it is a dot com emergency rental assistance alabama.com it uses a software platform called neighborly and i share that only because most of the local grants are using the same software so they look exactly alike but what this software is meant to do is for the tenant to go in and apply for their piece for the landlord to go in to apply for their piece both parties have to apply the landlord has to agree in most cases to accept the rental assistance and stop any eviction bring the client current and that process will proceed through um it can in some cases also pay past your utilities that you haven’t been able to pay due to coving um because otherwise you know if you have no power in your home you really can’t live in it for very long running water too so that is a statewide program as i mentioned some of the larger municipalities were also able to apply for these funds and three of those programs are up and running here in huntsville our program is up um i think they’re going to scroll it across the bottom of the screen but it’s on the city’s website huntsvilleal.gov you can apply for emergency rental assistance through the city of huntsville at that link you need to live within the city limits of huntsville to qualify for this um madison county was also and to give you a rough idea the city of huntsville has over six million dollars to distribute um through that link so i mean when we start talking about the average amount of past due rent due that is a lot of people that are going to get help for a while madison county um has assistance pending they have not opened their portal yet so if you live in madison county but not the city of huntsville you still need to go through the state program the era alabama.com they’ll also scroll two links on the bottom mobile county has opened its funds up as has baldwin county um so if you live in either of those counties you can apply through their local link for assistance because that’s a smaller pool of applicants it does tend to run faster than the state program that’s just because the state has millions of available people and the local municipalities do not but in either case in most cases they’re telling us that applications take four to six weeks to process it’s important for tenants to know that hey they need to keep making partial payments to the best of their ability don’t assume that you don’t need to make a partial payment because you’ve applied for this if you have the ability to and i’m sure brad counsels clients in a probably a very similar way than i do i tell people to pay their bills in a certain order if they are in crisis if you are in crisis if you do not have enough money to pay everything that you need medicine that keeps you alive comes first you are no good to any creditor your family or anyone if you are dead please take the medicine that keeps you alive um basic food that’s your you know what they proverbially call the beans and rice budget you’re no good to anyone if you’re starving and you will soon be dead don’t meds food rent comes third that’s how i’ve canceled clients my whole career um and again it may be a partial payment at this time but pay what you are able to to keep the roof over your head that’s what keeps you protected both in terms of the federal eviction moratorium and just common sense we will see other counties come online with this assistance there are literally millions of dollars up for grabs there is more coming out of the third round of the stimulus and we don’t know yet how that gets distributed um but if you are falling in these categories where you’re getting you know eviction papers apply for assistance in the area that you’re eligible for um most of our judges have seen me now in north alabama i take my laptop to court turn the screen around and show them the application status to show that this person has done what they can and if you don’t this um the websites require you to upload some documents um they are cell phone they have a web interface so you can take pictures with your cell phone and as long as they’re clear you can upload that way but if you need some help applying in terms of scanning documents or getting paperwork you are more than welcome to come to legal services we are happy to help people apply for this we want you to stay in your home that’s that’s the most important thing for your stability is to stay in your home and that’s why we care and why we do this um there is assistance coming online for homeowners that came out of the third stimulus i believe um the federal application for that literally opened up this week we know that the governor’s office is applying with the alabama housing finance authority for that assistance we believe that it will run very much if people are familiar or remember the hardest hit alabama program from back in the foreclosure crisis we believe that it’s going to follow the same general application process as that did but that is not online yet for people facing um foreclosure and the reason it’s not online yet is that their deadline is longer than the rental deadline is wow

and again for our viewers that have been trying to write down these websites real quickly this recording will live on our facebook page so you can go back and pause and we’ll also try to post the links individually for you so you can go and get this help that’s available right now and i love um the description you gave we all do a storm in fact we’re still dealing with the storm but different boats um some some of us are unfortunate and some are really struggling right now um so so we need to help one another and you know i’d be remiss since since my firm does primarily consumer bankruptcy also discuss the bankruptcy options that are available so to our viewers are essentially two different types of bankruptcy there are types of bankruptcy where you can reorganize or restructure your debt almost always for an individual that’s going to be a chapter 13 type bankruptcy and then straight bankruptcy what most people think of when they hear bankruptcy chapter 7 is a liquidation type bankruptcy so if when these moratoriums expire you have a large amount of rents that you can’t pay and you haven’t been able to take make use of any of the programs that howard’s described a chapter 13 bankruptcy may be a way if your lease hasn’t been terminated to catch up on what you’re behind and stay within

and if you’re behind on your mortgage payments your first option needs to be to try to do a modification with your mortgage company most of them are offering some sort of modification right now where you can either put your payments at the end of the mortgage or you can work out some other type of repayment plan but but if these payments become due and you haven’t been able to put that money away to catch up on what’s behind reach out and talk to one of our offices about restructuring your debt to a chapter 13 reorganization stay in your home stop the foreclosure um you know just like with the example

you don’t want to you want to hope that you’re going to be able to solve the problem and what we find is when you call your mortgage company a lot of times you’ll talk to one department that say well you know we’ll work with you on a modification we’ll work with you but the other department’s moving forward with the foreclosure in alabama once that foreclosure sale takes place um it’s over you can’t you can’t cure the arrears to a reorganization or chapter 13 bankruptcy at that time be proactive reach out for help as well ahead of time as we can um ali i i know i filed a chapter 13 bankruptcy to stop a foreclosure as little as about five or ten minutes before the first time um but folks we don’t like to do that please don’t make me come into work on a sunday afternoon i’ve done it i’ve done it to stop a monday morning sale please don’t make me i mean my children are lovely people but no no one wants to do it that unprepared and again people you may get mixed messages from your mortgage company they’re all trying to make modifications work right now but it’s a different department or it’s being where the foreclosure is being turned over to an outside law firm that has no idea you’re still talking about about that foreclosure sale date is the important date um tell us about what legal services does as far as bankruptcy do you all handle all different types of bankruptcy are there income restrictions tell us about what you all do for people sure so we are federally funded and because of that our income cap is 200 of the poverty level that’s set by congress every year it is completely out of our control whatever 200 of the poverty level is is our cap we do have some special grant funding that lets us go a little bit above that in certain areas but in general 200 of the poverty line is our cap that is well below the area median income in most areas of alabama certainly in your municipalities um but before you go on i hear that the description a lot but i’m not sure our viewers what does 200 of the poverty level mean um just in general terms so the poverty level is set at the federal level by congress and believe it or not the way that it’s actually set has nothing to do with anything except um the usda thrift spending plan for food is literally how they they handle that to give you a rough idea for 2021 for a household of four it’s about 53 000 a year in income for a household of one it’s a hair over twenty five thousand dollars um it’s about thirty five thousand dollars for a household of two um so it’s very low income even when you consider it double the poverty level um for most people in alabama um if we serve because of that the vast majority of bankruptcies that i file are chapter sevens for people who we cannot protect an income or an asset for in any other way i um as you know alabama protects garnish wages in a really wonky way and we protect the first thousand dollars in a paycheck that’s a really stupid way to write a law if an alabama legislature is funding um a thousand dollars in a paycheck for a person who works at a restaurant and is paid weekly maybe they work at red lobster you can make fifty two thousand dollars a year and qualify for this protection and keep all of your income you could be a school bus driver paid monthly and make thirteen thousand dollars a year and not qualify um so we file where we see a wage garnishment that we can’t stop in any other way generally there’s a two-page affidavit that will stop a wage garnishment but if we can’t use that for any reason or if you’ve reached the point of what i call you know my office is a no shame zone there is so much shame and stigma attached to debt attached to eviction i joke that it’s true the only thing i’ll shame you for is being a dallas cowboys fan i married an eagles fan i can’t deal with dallas cowboys fans everybody else is welcome um but other than that i won’t shame you for anything unless you’re a cowboys fan and i’ll play with you then but you know there’s i call it legal whack-a-mole i’m sure there’s a better term for it but it’s when you just start getting lawsuits coming out of everywhere you know most people before they come to us they’ve tried to pay their bills maybe they’ve tried to consolidate their debts maybe they’ve gone and gotten a payday loan to rob peter to pay paul and the next thing you know small claim your small claims there it’s like that whack-a-mole game from chuck e cheese back in the day um getting legal whack-a-mole and you cannot reach financial stability because as soon as you knock one down another one pops up that’s when we start looking at a seven to make sure that someone can keep their housing because realistically if your wages are garnished this week and i stop it and they’re garnished by someone else next week and i stop it you’re losing enough income that you can’t pay your rent and the snowball is about to hit we pay chapter seven to stop snowball um for most people who go through legal aid obviously we are completely free there is nothing you can pay me there is not a mechanism by which you can pay me you can donate to the nonprofit choose um and for most of our clients there is a fee waiver on the filing fee for bankruptcy if you fall below 150 of the poverty level so for the vast majority of people we serve bankruptcy is completely free other than the gas you pay to come see me or to come see one of our lawyers around the state

we also in limited cases file chapter 13 for people who are generally we are doing it to stop a foreclosure um i do tell people that unfortunately it is pretty rare to find someone who meets that stringent financial deadline that congress sets for us and can fund a 13 plan to keep their home but where they are able to that is certainly an option that we offer but by and large the vast majority of what we file our chapter sevens um for people whose debt is just unsustainable for daily living where it’s impacting their ability to keep a roof over their head and food in their belly holly i i i hope you haven’t copyrighted that no shame zone because i may feel like i love that um folks good people i’ve been doing this for well over 30 years good people have money problems there’s so many folks have this stereotypical view in their mind of a bankrupt being you know some bad person that is not true and especially after this last year it’s not true behind on their bills and we want to help you both pilot legal services and the attorneys with the fine motors law we want to help you we don’t compete against one another uh we are both here to help you we we serve

different sectors perhaps there are people that highly can’t help that we can’t help um it’s important for you to know that there are ways to file a bankruptcy and people that say well i’m broke how am i going to pay for a bankruptcy attorney well as holly just described there are ways to have the court filing fee waived or to pay installments usually in the states that we do business if you’re doing a chapter 13 bankruptcy you don’t pay your attorney’s video upfront you paid as part of your plan of reorganization and what i tell people that usually means your creditors are paying you because your monthly payments are going to be based upon your disposable income you’re paying what you can afford to and if money has to be used to pay your attorney it often means your creditors aren’t being paid so how i think we both want people to know that there are options available that they aren’t expensive and there are people that want to help you hollywood we’ve got about 10 minutes left i want to be respectful of your time um and we’ve had a few questions come in here um that i want to pose to you some of these will take both of us i think there may be some for both of us but question here you answered it earlier but please again a person wants to know how long will i have until i get evicted so if you’re facing eviction and you’ve been served with a court notice so the eviction process starts with a non-court notice um generally if your landlord is evicting you for non-payment of rent they’ve got to give you a seven day notice to cure or quit uh that notice is basically your pay rent or leave or we’re going to sue to evict you notice if you pay your rent within those seven days they can’t file an eviction if you don’t pay they can start the eviction process um from that notice you’ll get us if you aren’t able to pay you’ll get a court summons um it’ll be the words unlawful detainer on it that’s the fancy lawyer word for eviction in alabama you’ll have seven calendar days to answer it i emphasize the calendar days because people still have this concept that you know weekends and holidays don’t count it’s seven calendar days just count seven um once you file your answer the case will get set and again it is a checkbox form it does not cost any money to file it check the box that says other right i want my day in court that’s all you have to do you don’t have to write your life story you don’t have to attach anything check the other box i want my day in court um once you have filed your answer it’ll get set for court usually two to three weeks after you filed your answer even if you go to court and lose you’ve got seven days to move after that you may be able in court whether you’re with an attorney or with on your own to negotiate for time to move with the landlord’s attorney for example maybe you’ve signed a lease for another place but you need 10 days to get into the other place most landlord attorneys are more than willing to give you that decent amount of time to to move with dignity no one wants to put all of your stuff out on the curb they want to work with you they can’t work with you if you don’t answer and don’t show up because that’s a fear a lot of people have that they fear i’m behind my right i’m going to come home and all my stuff is going to be out on the street the landlord can’t just do that on his or her own they’ve got to go through this court proceeding where you have the right to raise defenses or work something out yeah the unlawful detainer process is the exclusive legal method for eviction in the state of alabama um i won’t lie and say that we don’t have landlords that do stupid illegal things people do stupid illegal things every day um drive home on a major highway and you’ll see it um if a landlord attempts that illegal eviction puts your stuff out without following the legal process you can sue them for actual damages or three times the monthly rent most landlords are yeah not not any long line not many landlords are that stupid anymore um after the first few times they do it and they end up paying three times the monthly rent in my attorney’s fee and while i am free to clients um i am very expensive per hour if you have to go pay my attorney’s fee back to legal services um that’s about how long you have from being past due to a court-ordered eviction is in the four to six week range um it is important to note that you don’t have to be 30 days behind in your rent you don’t have to be a full month behind to be evicted most leases are something like do on the first late after the fifth if if it’s the sixth then you haven’t paid they can give you that seven day cure or quit notice and if you don’t pay they can file eviction after that so that’s a common misconception is that you’ve got to be 30 days behind before they can start the eviction process that’s not true i’m going to go a little bit astray here but i often hear people say i’m not paying my rent because they won’t fix my plumbing or they won’t my lights aren’t working is that a good reason not to pay your rent in the state of alabama it is not so our law actually exclusively sets out that the one thing you can’t do if your landlord isn’t making repairs is withhold your rent to use any of the other remedies under law you can’t have intentionally withheld your rent there are a lot of options if your landlord isn’t making repairs there are ways to legally break your lease depending on serious the repair or other options from there to argue that you know diminished value of the property or maybe the property isn’t meeting housing code anymore um there are options when your landlord doesn’t make repairs but the one thing you can’t do is not pay rent

a person asks here if i file bankruptcy is our way to keep my home um yes people there is a way to keep your home um most people that file bankruptcy do not surrender their home you can but but alabama has laws that protect a certain amount of equity in your home it’s currently right around 16 000 it’s just just adjusted um and for a married couple that doubles so if you have less than that and equity in your home you can protect your home and if you’re behind on your payments you can do a chapter 13 reorganization type bankruptcy and catch up your payments you just need to have enough to make your current mortgage payments and uh sufficient income to pay into the court to catch up or to fund your plan but in most cases we can do something and i think you probably can say the state of legal services we can use we save your home get to it

the sooner you get to me the better and you know one thing i caution people about is bankruptcy law is unique because it’s federal law but these exemptions that you’re talking about the money and stuff that you can protect is set by state law and so we get people who play google esquire and you google the bankruptcy law and look i’m all about being informed and knowing your rights but because bankruptcy is this unique imagination of federal and state you get people who go oh i thought the homestead exemption was unlimited no that’s florida and that’s why celebrities file there um you know i tell people i can look up a great youtube video on how to perform a root canal and absolutely no one wants me to do that it doesn’t qualify me to perform a root canal the same thing is true with bankruptcy look up information from trusted sources go on legal services website go on bond and bonuses website go on the courts website um but when you start getting into chat rooms and forums and reddit you’re getting information from other states that can really do you a disservice and no one wants that for you we want you to be well informed of your rights yeah i’m great glad you clarified there and don’t just go to websites let me add give us a call call us we’ll talk to you about what your options are and i’m sure again that’s the same for legal services as it is at the bond and vertical offices absolutely free initial consultations right now where we’ll answer some of these questions but the exemption laws do change from state to state ali i have offices in of course alabama and mississippi

until as you remember i guess it’s been eight nine years ago from now our homestead exemption in alabama was only five thousand dollars at the same time a consumer that came to see me in mississippi could protect up to seventy five thousand dollars in their home and a homeowner in florida had that unlimited homestead exemption so it varies quite a bit from state to state bankruptcy is not a time when you want to do it on your own folks you know i went to law school hollywood to law school we’ve been doing this for a long time um let us help you with something like this you know you’re risking losing your home you risk losing your car you’re risking the wage garnishment it’s not a time to try to do it you can but i encourage you to reach out for help we offer absolutely free initial consultations and if you qualify legal services and help you without paying any legal fees i i am very respectful of your time or right up against an hour i can’t tell you how much i appreciate you participating i always leave a minute or two at the end to give my guest and i want to give you if there’s anything important you think our viewers need to know about evictions or foreclosures or the services offered by legal services please go ahead and chime in

sure so one thing we didn’t talk about that is shockingly common in alabama are rent to own agreements people who know me know that they are my least favorite thing in the world um we know what a lease does and what a landlord and a tenant have to do under it we know what a mortgage does and what a buyer a seller a finance company have to do rent to owns fall in the middle and they’re incredibly contact specific and a lot of times that contract might as well be written on a con on a you know cocktail napkin if you have a rent to own please contact a lawyer everything depends on your contract don’t assume that one of these forms of protection covers you seriously call us i’m here six days a week um i don’t want anyone to lose their home through one of those vessels and and that’s been something that we’ve really had to deal with a lot over the past year our rent because they fall in a crevasse in between the areas of protection um and you know the other thing is if you think you qualify for legal services um or even if you don’t we are happy to take an application we’re happy to tell you if we can help if we can’t we can point you who can we do pretty much everything civil you can think of um and especially as it comes to housing and consumer law um you know like i said we’re in no shame zone we are not you know i know that there is this perception that legal aid lawyers how good is a free lawyer we’re the best lawyers that money can’t buy most of the people in my office have been doing this for over a decade this is our passion um and i assure you we are still pretty feared when we walk in a courtroom um we’re here to help and i i just don’t want shame to stop people from getting the help that they need and facing a massive loss for their family that quite frankly changes the trajectory of their future because they were too ashamed to call or come in don’t don’t do that to yourself call us call you know the attorney that you trust call an attorney that you choose but don’t don’t put your family at risk um over something that we might very well have been able to fix in an hour for free great advice and again you and all of the attorneys at legal services are heroes we appreciate the work you do

on behalf of the least of us far too often i do want folks to know that the bodybuilders offices also are offering absolutely free initial consultations these are tough times we want to help people students reach out for help um dolly uh thanks again thanks also to origin be behind you one of my uh heroes i see her on the desk behind my little shrine

uh to all of our viewers remember that these recordings are available on our website and the bodybuilders facebook live takes place every wednesday at 1 central time we look forward to seeing you back here next week on behalf of holly on behalf of myself god bless all of you and we’ll see you again next week thank you holly thank you