{"id":401,"date":"2011-09-10T16:56:27","date_gmt":"2011-09-10T20:56:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/?p=401"},"modified":"2011-09-10T16:59:10","modified_gmt":"2011-09-10T20:59:10","slug":"bank-cannot-suggest-a-homeowner-stop-mortgage-payments-as-part-of-modification-negotiations-and-then-foreclose-on-the-basis-of-that-failure-to-pay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/2011\/09\/10\/bank-cannot-suggest-a-homeowner-stop-mortgage-payments-as-part-of-modification-negotiations-and-then-foreclose-on-the-basis-of-that-failure-to-pay\/","title":{"rendered":"Bank cannot suggest a homeowner stop mortgage payments as part of modification negotiations and then foreclose on the basis of that failure to pay"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A federal District Court judge in Massachusetts has ruled in the case of<a href=\"http:\/\/pacer.mad.uscourts.gov\/dc\/opinions\/young\/pdf\/dixon%20v%20wells%20fargo%20bank.pdf\"> Dixon v. Wells Fargo Bank<\/a>, 2011 WL 2945795 (D. Mass. 2011), that a ban cannot induce a homeowner to stop making mortgage payments as a prerequisite to negotiations to modify the mortgage and then use that failure to make the mortgage payments as a predicate for foreclosing on the property and evicting the owner. The bank&#8217;s representation that it would renegotiate following the borrower&#8217;s cessation of mortgage payments constituted a promise on which the borrower reasonably relied and that promise could be equitably enforced by denying the bank the right to foreclose in the circumstances. The court did not find a promise by the bank to modify the mortgage but it did have a duty to negotiate the modification in good faith before foreclosing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A federal District Court judge in Massachusetts has ruled in the case of Dixon v. Wells Fargo Bank, 2011 WL 2945795 (D. Mass. 2011), that a ban cannot induce a homeowner to stop making mortgage payments as a prerequisite to negotiations to modify the mortgage and then use that failure to make the mortgage payments [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2199,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1564,18736,18739],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mortgages","category-real-estate-transactions","category-statute-of-frauds"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5SHi7-6t","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":403,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401\/revisions\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jsinger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}