The process of obtaining a mortgage for your home can be very confusing. There are many parties involved in your mortgage and it can be easy to become overwhelmed by all of the new information. Taking out a mortgage is not as simple as just paying the price of the home over a certain period of time. There is interest factored into your payment along with principal, tax and insurance. When your house gets foreclosed it's easy to throw your hands in the air and say, “It's not my fault, I must be a victim of predatory lending!”. However, this is not always a reasonable conclusion. Here are the signs to look for in order to figure out if you are truly a victim of bad lending.
Our firm recently received a question from a homeowner in Pennsylvania who wanted to know if he could use an unclean hands defense to avoid foreclosure, and if he could he sue his bank?
Unclean Hands
First, what is an unclean hands defense?
An unclean hands defense is when one party in a lawsuit didn't wash their hands before coming into court and gets dirt all over the legal documents and the judge throws the case out. Precedent for the unclean hands defense was established in 1975 with the landmark Pigpen v. Wells Fargo case, which went all the way to the supreme court.
