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Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Legal Questions

We attended a legal seminar last night, and thought that the majority of us could all benefit from what was covered. We have been working with Pre-Paid Legal for the last few years, and it has been the best thing we could have gotten involved in.

For starters, how many of us can afford legal coverage for the following common issues: do you have a will; what will you do if the IRS chooses to audit you; what recourse do you have if creditors threaten to take action against you for your ex-spouse's debts; you receive a letter from a creditor and it is not your debt? Also what can you do if you cannot make your mortgage payment anymore now that you lost your job or took a deep wage cut? With our Pre-Paid Legal services, we can get these and many other questions answered by attorneys without having to pay extreme fees. Depending on the topic and / or question, many times the questions can be answered by a call on the phone, at no extra cost to you.

In the seminar we attended last night, the discussion was centered around "distressed homeowners". The firm covered Foreclosure Options and Loan Modification Solutions. This seminar was extremely beneficial even for the people who are not in financial straights. It is good to know what options are available, and to understand what other homeowners in your neighborhood may be experiencing. Once people know and understand their options, the stress levels can be greatly reduced. Having ready access to a lawyer (without worrying about hourly fees) is also a great stress reducer.

The seminar covered the broad topics of Foreclosure, Loan Modification, and Refinancing. They could not go into detail without infringing upon any attorney/client privilege. Basically, we discovered the meaning of a foreclosure/trustee's sale, what the options are, and some options on how to stop a foreclosure (if you want or can). They also covered what a short sale or Deed-in-Lieu of Foreclosure was along with the tax ramifications and compared that with the types of bankruptcy available.

The next segment reviewed the basics of the government's Making Home Affordable Loan Modification Guidelines, who is eligible, what the borrower must do and what the banks are required to do (all lenders accepting TARP or Federal Government financial assistance MUST participate in this program). We also briefly covered loan modification on second liens and when loans cannot be modified.

There was a tremendous amount of information provided in this hour and a half long discussion, and I don't want to bore you with the details if it is not anything you are interested in, but if you are interested in more information on any of the topics I listed above, please send me a message, and I will respond to your request the best I can.

If you are interested in more information about Pre-Paid Legal and if it is a good option for you, please contact me at hawgwash1@yahoo.com with your questions. I also have a pretty decent Pre-Paid Legal website that covers some of the options. There are limitations to what can be offered based on what state you live in (and no, I don't mean the state of confusion), so if you have questions, please feel free to contact me, I will help you to navigate and obtain the answers you need. As I mentioned, we have had PPL for several years, and have lots of opportunities to use it. The neat thing is that we have asked questions of our attorneys that if we didn't have easy access, we would have guessed the answer. It is very nice to be able to pick up the telephone and ask a legal question, knowing you will receive a response no later than 2 hours down the road AND you didn't incur any additional charges. We are much more willing to pick up the phone for a legal question rather than guess and get bit hard down the road.

The best way I can sum up Pre-Paid Legal: it is like legal health insurance...you may never need to see the doctor (attorney) but it is sure nice to know you have access if you do need advice.

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