What is an Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland?

You’re losing sleep at night. You’ve already received a lot of mail from your lender including a Notice of Intent to Foreclose. You may be afraid to open the mail because you have a sinking feeling in your heart that whatever is in there, it’s not good.  If you open the mail, you are faced with 100s of pages of legal jargon and you don’t understand what you’re reading. You’re overwhelmed with the prospect of filling out a bunch of paperwork and don’t have the energy to do it.  

One day you receive a large document in the mail or posted to your door and it says Order to Docket Foreclosure. It looks like the rest of the documents that you’ve already received and either way, it’s all legal jargon so you don’t understand what it means. However, this is a very important document and means that a law firm has filed a foreclosure lawsuit against you and time is running out to save your home. If you see this Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland, you must take immediate action.

Who Are the Substitute Trustees?

The Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland is filed by the Substitute Trustees who are individuals at a law firm who are appointed to conduct the foreclosure. You will often see in the caption of the lawsuit a lot of names and these are the substitute trustees who have been appointed by your lender. In Maryland, a Deed of Trust gives your lender the right to appoint a trustee to foreclose on your home if payments are not made. Before even filing the Order to Docket Foreclosure, something important is going on in the background. Your Substitute Trustees will file a document in the land records in the county where your home is located called a Deed of Appointment of Substitute Trustees. This document, which you will not even be aware of, almost always means that your lender is getting ready to foreclose on your home.

Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland

The Foreclosure Process in Maryland involves a number of steps that your lender must take before it can auction off your home at the courthouse steps. Make no mistake about it – if you are at the point where your lender has hired a law firm to file an Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland, you are quickly running out of time to save your home.  The law firms that handle foreclosures have hundreds if not thousands of foreclosure cases, and they are hired to do primarily one thing – take your home from you and sell it.  The law firms are being paid by your lender to do that, so they are incentivized to sell your home. Some of the foreclosure law firms include McCabe, Weisberg & Conway, Cohn, Goldberg & Deutsch, LLC, BWW Law Group, LLC and others.

The Order to Docket Foreclosure is a lawsuit that has been filed in the Circuit Court in the county where your home is located. Your home can be auctioned off as soon as 68 days from when this document is filed with the court. The Order to Docket Foreclosure can also be filed as soon as 90 days from the first missed mortgage payment.

The Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland lawsuit, also called an Order to Docket or Order to Docket Suit of Foreclosure of Deed of Trust, will include a lot of important information, including a Preliminary Loss Mitigation Affidavit, a Loss Mitigation Application, a copy of your Note and Deed of Trust, several Affidavits certifying that the lender has the right to foreclose.  

The Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland will look something like this:

As you can see, this contains a lot of legal jargon including citations to various Maryland laws.  The Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland will also include 100s of pages of documents which can be very confusing.  

Along with the Order to Docket Foreclosure, in Maryland one of the documents included is a Preliminary Loss Mitigation Affidavit, which is a statement signed by your lender that indicates the status of any communications you have had with your lender regarding alternatives to foreclosure  It looks like this:

Many times, the lender will check off that it has not been able to establish communication with the borrower, particularly if the borrower has ignored all the mail that’s been sent to them. Even if the borrower has contacted the lender, if the borrower has not submitted all of the information in the Loss Mitigation Applications that the lender requires to consider any loss mitigation options, the lender will check off that it hasn’t obtained all of the necessary information.

If you are getting large packets in the mail and you see one called Order to Docket Foreclosure in Maryland, you must take immediate action if you want to save your home. Bankruptcy will stop the foreclosure in its tracks and allow you to take control and save your home. If you have questions about what is an Order to Docket Foreclosure and stopping a foreclosure in Maryland, call Steiner Law Group at (410) 670-7060 or schedule a consultation online.