Real Estate morgtage and divorce

[shnewd]

I have been divorced for a few years now. In my divorce it states that the x is liable for all future and present morgages. We used the same lawyer so there was never a deadline for her to take my name off the motgage. Now i have a debt collector trying to get the unpaid balance from me. The divorce took place in Iowa. What i need to know is can they collect on this debt from me, before they forclose, and start garnishing me for her debt? I know that my name is still on the motgage and that she never took it off or refinanced. Thank you if you can help
shnewd

Signing away your rights to the property in the form of a Quit Claim does not remove your name from the mortgage. If your lawyer told you that your name can be "removed" from the mortgage, then your lawyer lied to you.

The divorce judge's ruling means NOTHING to the finance company that loaned YOU & your ex the money to buy the house. Their agreement is with YOU. They don't give a rat's a$$ what the judge has to say because he/she has no jurisdiction over them.

I would certainly write your lawyer to express displeasure, and let him/her know you will NOT recommend them to friends. I would even go as far as to suggest that you'd like to report this to the local newspaper so that they can run a story in their publication that will help other folks not run into the same problem since your own attorney overlooked the issue in your case.

Maybe that kind of talk with get you some "free" help - that you paid for already, but didn't get - and your attorney might be kind enough to submit an appeal for just that specific issue to be amended & a deadline entered for when your ex needs to at least APPLY for financing on her own.

If you didn't stipulate a time frame for your ex-wife to get a new mortgage, she can ruin your credit if she wants to by not paying the mortgage on time or at all, for that matter.

Does the house have any equity in it? If your answer to that is no, then I'd be in fear that the ex-wife won't be overly concerned about foreclosure.

I am sorry that you had a crummy attorney. I hope you didn't pay a lot of money for such bad service. It's really unfortunate that incompetent people can get law degrees and take advantage of people that are under a tremendous amount of stress, i.e., divorcing. We are supposed to be able to trust these people, and they are supposed to be ethical.

I'm in the middle of a 3 year battle myself, and had to do a lot of my own research.

I sincerely hope you are able to get justice in this matter.