Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

Re: Foreclosure By Tre

The "John Doe by Tre" probably means a property formerly owned by John Doe was sold by a trustee....the more usual abbreviation for "trustee" is Ttee., but I suppose some might use Tre.

While most bank parent companies would be corporations, banks usually do their residential lending through subsidiaries. I have seen both a "J. P. Morgan Chase Bank LLC" and a "Chase Home Finance LLC" on the Web.

It's pretty important to keep tabs on a judgment debtor's whereabouts, because you need to record an abstract of judgment in each county where he might have real property. Fortunately, in this era of computers, it's pretty hard to hide from dedicated and trained searchers.

Re: Foreclosure By Tre

Lots of attorneys, including me, would love to help you collect your judgment. I would be surprised if there is anything shady going on with the foreclosure, the sale price just didn't cover anything beyond the first mortgage. Your abstract of judgment is still valid, and there is still a lien on any property he buys or has. Remember you must renew the judgment every 10 years. There are a variety of other, creative methods for finding people and collecting on judgments.

Re: Foreclosure By Tre

I am sorry to hear about the problems you are having with this matter. Let me first say that what you are going through is not entirely uncommon right now. Yes, you can, to a degree, determine who the buyer of the property was at foreclosure. By the County Website, I assume you mean either the Tax Assessor's office, or the County Recorder's office. In either case, their records are not updated as frequently as a title company's records. For instance, in the case of a foreclosure sale, it could be several days after the sale before the foreclosing bank actually records its Trustee's Deed, then several weeks before the County Recorder or Assessor actually post that change on their site. Different Counties operate at different levels of automation and disclosure. Foreclosures are not generally handled by the actual bank, but by trust services or mortgage servicing companies with all sorts of weird names (not John Doe, however), so you wouldn't necessarily see Chase Bank as the foreclosing trustee. To determine what happened to the property at foreclosure, you need to get a full property profile from a title company, with all recorded documents. Unfortunately, generally only attorneys and real estate agents can get these for free. If you have a realtor friend, have them pull one for you.

While it is possible that your husband somehow bought the property at foreclosure sale through a "straw buyer" such as a trust, etc... its not as likely a scenario as you might think. Get the property profile, find out who bought it at foreclosure, if anyone other than the bank, then you can start doing research to determine who that is. Good Family Law attorneys can certainly help with this because if he did so to avoid your lien, he may have to face a judge over that action. Good luck.

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