Failure To Add/Include Hubby On Title To Home Leaves Him, Young Son Facing The Boot After Homeowner/Wife's Untimely Death & Bankster's Refusal To Offer Loan Modification

In Sacramento, California, the San Francisco Chronicle reports:

• Next month, Jose Hernandez is slated to lose his home to foreclosure. The south Sacramento home was where he and his wife planned to raise their son.
  
  But, five years after moving in, Hernandez’s wife died of complications from diabetes, leaving her husband fighting to keep the home they shared. Without her income, Hernandez fell behind on the $5,000 mortgage payment and said he was turned away from foreclosure relief programs because the home was purchased under his wife’s name.
  
  Although he inherited the property when his wife died, Hernandez is not protected by California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights, a set of regulations that require lenders to work with homeowners to help them save their homes from foreclosure. He’s not protected because his name was not on the loan or title.(1)
  
  Instead, Hernandez said he’s been lost in the lender’s maze of paperwork and people.
  
  “I must have faxed the death certificate over a dozen times,” Hernandez said. “They said they couldn’t find it. In the end, they just want to foreclose on the property.”
  
  Sen. Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, said Hernandez’s story is all too familiar. After California passed first-in-the-nation protections for homeowners in 2012, many families have been able to avoid foreclosures by modifying their home loans.
  
  Leno said those protections should be extended to spouses and children who inherit a property. His bill would require lenders to work with next of kin who lived in the home — even if they’re not listed on the deed — to help them stay in the home they shared with their deceased loved one. If they fail to do so, an heir could sue the lender, just as homeowners are permitted under the 2012 law.

For more, see Leno bill would strengthen family heirs’ homeownership rights (may require subscription).

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(1) While there is a federal law (ie. the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982) that offers some protection to those who inherit a mortgaged home of 4 units or less (including a co-op apartment unit and a mobile home) from a deceased homeowner, there appears to be nothing in that law that specifically forces a lender to offer loan modification arrangements to the deceased owner's heirs. See Federal Law Protects Against "Due On Sale" Clauses When Inheriting Mortgaged Property From Relatives.