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A SPECIAL SECTION: Haiti, Since the January 12, 2010 Earthquake

Posted November 8, 2010

National

Taking On a Second Mortgage To Pay the Foreclosure Lawyer

JOE RADDLE/GETTY IMAGES

We're not money lenders," said Peter Ticktin, a foreclosure lawyer who devised "a pay later" plan for troubled homeowners.

By DAVID STREITFELD

For some Florida residents, the price of getting out of foreclosure will include taking on a second mortgage - payable this time to their lawyers.

The new mortgage, which takes effect only if the foreclosure is dismissed and the homeowner's debt to the bank is reduced, is controversial among defense lawyers, some of whom call it "creepy" and "crass." Yet even they acknowledge it offers a solution to a vexing question: How do they get paid?

After recent revelations that banks were sloppy in processing many foreclosures and in some cases lack standing to seize a house, potential clients seeking to challenge their lenders are flocking to lawyers. But while these distressed homeowners might have a case, they generally lack the resources to pay legal fees. Being in foreclosure usually means being broke.

JASON HENRY

Thomas Ice and other foreclosure lawyers in Florida typically receive a few hundred dollars a month from ech client.

"We thought, -˜Why don't we use a bit of ingenuity to find an affordable way to represent them?'" said Peter Ticktin of the Ticktin Law Group in Deerfield Beach, Fla. "It's a new model, a new paradigm."

Foreclosure defense is a new legal specialty whose strategies and techniques are still being worked out. Mr. Ticktin, who has some 3,000 foreclosure clients, says his plan to collect fees by taking another mortgage on his clients' properties has already been copied by other firms.

The Ticktin mortgages resemble the loans that the clients originally got from Countrywide, GMAC and other lenders. Each will be a contractual obligation with the law firm, labeled as a mortgage and structured like one, too, with the client paying a certain sum every month and using the house as collateral.

Unconventional payment structures are becoming popular in the foreclosure hotbed of Florida. Whether they yet have caught on elsewhere is unclear. Certainly, Mr. Ticktin is far from the only lawyer being forced to innovate.

"We can put in $100,000 of our time but over the length of a case be paid only $6,000 in monthly fees," said Thomas E. Ice of Ice Legal in Royal Palm Beach.

Mr. Ice, Mr. Ticktin and many other Florida foreclosure lawyers typically receive a few hundred dollars a month from each client. To supplement that, they seek legal fees from the banks they successfully challenge as well as contingency fees.

Contingency fees are standard in cases in which the client has little money but there is the possibility of a large payout. A slip and fall on a store's wet floor or a medical malpractice claim are classic contingency cases. If the plaintiff wins, insurance companies ultimately foot the bill.

In foreclosure cases, however, the client pays the contingency fee. While such an approach is sometimes used in commercial litigation, this is a first for consumer cases, said Lester Brickman, a professor at Cardozo Law School in New York.

"For a lawyer to supplement or replace the banks as a long-term mortgage creditor of homeowners leaves me a little queasy," said Mr. Brickman, an expert on contingency fees. "It's an invitation for the public to say, 'There go the lawyers again.'"

If the Ticktin lawyers - there are 19 now and will be two more soon - cause the original mortgage to be nullified or reduced because of the bank's misdeeds, the client must take out a new mortgage for 40 percent of the savings.

For instance, if the mortgage was $500,000 and is reduced by the bank to $200,000, the client would owe Ticktin 40 percent of $300,000, or $120,000, minus any legal fees paid by the losing bank as well as any monthly sums paid to the law firm.

Clients would be attracted to this arrangement because they might save nearly $200,000 and avoid foreclosure. They can either stay in their house or - after another legal hurdle - sell it.

Mr. Ticktin conceded there were potential problems with this "pay later" plan, starting with the uncertainty over whether the clients could and would pay the debt over a period of many years and what Mr. Ticktin's response would be if they did not.

"We would never enforce the mortgage and foreclose," he said. "We're not in that end of the game. We're not money lenders. We're charging a small amount of interest" - four percent - "just to make it legal."

For any of this to happen, of course, he has to win his cases. Successful foreclosure litigation can take years, and even if the banks are under fire few believe they will go out of their way to make it any easier. But even if people in foreclosure never win a settlement from a bank, they could stay a few more months in their homes by filing a lawsuit.

The Ticktin firm is growing rapidly, adding three clients a day. If all 3,000 clients ended with mortgages payable to the firm, Mr. Ticktin said, "that would be wonderful, but realistically I'm expecting fewer."

So far, he said, he has mortgages on the homes of five clients. None were available for comment.

Other lawyers said they were still puzzling over how to proceed. Roy Oppenheim is a veteran foreclosure defense lawyer, which means he has been doing it two years.

"Until recently, foreclosure defense would have been considered the lowest of the low - below the divorce guys, below ambulance chasers," said Mr. Oppenheim, who practices in Weston, Fla. "The idea was inconceivable that you might have legitimate defenses when your client did not pay the bank that had lent them a sum of money."

Then foreclosure lawyers started deposing bank employees, who admitted that their behavior in preparing court documents was negligent. That was quickly followed this fall by freezes imposed by some of the lenders. All 50 state attorneys general have joined forces to investigate and reshape banks' foreclosure practices.

Mr. Oppenheim now has 500 clients, twice as many as a year ago, all whom are paying $500 a month. "I'm happy and thrilled to wake up in the morning and be a real estate attorney in Florida," he said. "Weâ're starting to look at what the definition of exemplary representation would be." That would allow them to charge higher fees.

Some foreclosure lawyers have a more traditional approach, starting with a firm grip on clients' expectations.

"Any time someone calls me and says, ˜I want to keep the house and get my mortgage gone,' I say, ˜That's not realistic or fair,'" said Margery E. Golant of Boca Raton, a former executive at the lender Ocwen.

She takes foreclosure clients who can afford to pay as they go; there are a few. "I don't want to be my client's creditor," she said. "I want to be on their side."

Counting on clients to shoulder a large legal bill after the case is over can be fraught with conflicts, said Mr. Ice, the Royal Palm Beach lawyer.

In some cases, he said, the best a client might be able to do was get a mortgage modification. But the client might reject a bank's offer if it did not allow him enough every month to pay Mr. Ice as well.

"It's touchy," the lawyer said. "I don't ever want to have a client say, 'I'm not taking the deal because I can't afford to pay you.'"

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National, of Sunday, November 7, 2010.

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