Judges’ Revolt Against Faulty Foreclosures Spreads to Ohio

ForeclosureNotice We’ve reported how judges in Massachusetts, New York and Florida are clamping down on the foreclosure process, forcing lenders and loan servicers to prove that they actually own the debt before they can try to foreclose.

Now the movement has spread to Ohio. Three judges in Franklin County, which includes Columbus, announced recently that they will require lawyers to vouch for the validity of all the documents they file in residential foreclosures, according to a recent story in the Columbus Dispatch.

Many people are starting to pay attention to these documents because legal cases and criminal investigations around the country have shown that banks and mortgage servicers processed so many loans during the housing that they overwhelmed their own internal systems to track them all. The Florida Attorney General even released a slide show describing how banks rushed the process of filing paperwork on mortgages, as we reported, making it impossible to prove who actually owns the loans.

Six of the Ohio lawyers whose cases could be affected by the judges’ orders have challenged the ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court, saying that they violate attorney-client privilege.

Image: Steven Depolo, via Flickr.com