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WALL STREET JOURNAL
BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Faced with the threat of foreclosure, many homeowners abandon their homes.
Then there's Richard Davet.
He and his wife, Lynn, had lived in a six-bedroom home in this Cleveland suburb for nearly 20 years when, in 1996, he was served with a foreclosure lawsuit.
Flooding the courts with papers, Mr. Davet staved off foreclosure for 11 years, until January, 2007, when a county sheriff's deputy evicted the couple and changed the locks. They didn't make a mortgage payment the entire time.
"It was heaven on earth, an unbelievable property, and they took it from us like candy from a baby," he said.
Foreclosure actions typically take from a few months to a couple of years to get the borrower out of the home.
But more homeowners are delaying foreclosures by filing for bankruptcy on the eve of a court-ordered sale of the property, or refusing to answer the door when the plaintiff tries to "serve" them with a foreclosure lawsuit. They pay lawyers a few hundred dollars to file a motion that can buy them a little more time.
But few are as dogged as Mr. Davet.
And his fight may not be over yet. He is trying to get the charming 1940s house back, plus damages.
He's relying on the legal argument - currently making headlines - that a financial institution can file a foreclosure action only if it can prove it actually owns and holds the mortgage and promissory note.
A former jewelry-business owner, Mr. Davet and his wife, a former graphic-arts tutor, bought their house in 1978 for $150,000. As its value increased they borrowed against it.
They made their mortgage payments, but on one loan, they allegedly made payments late - 90 times, according to NationsBanc Mortgage Corp., which assessed the couple some $4,000 in late fees.
After the Davets for two years refused demands to pay the late fees, during which NationsBanc began refusing to accept their regular mortgage payments, the company sued for foreclosure.
At the time the couple owed $80,000 in principal, plus $160,000 on a second mortgage.
Mr. Davet insists the late fees were erroneous - he points to a deposition in which a NationsBanc employee conceded that the company couldn't back up its claims for a chunk of the fees. So he began his full-time crusade in the courts to keep his home.
He started with the help of lawyers, but those arrangements didn't last.
On his own, as a "pro se" litigant, Mr. Davet was undeterred. Four times a week he went to Case Western Reserve University School of Law to study legal writing and case law in its library.
Several years into the case, Bank of America, which had bought the owner of NationsBanc, took the unusual step of bringing in lawyers from a big corporate law firm, Jones Day.
Five years later, in 2005, a judge granted foreclosure in the amount Mr. Davet owed and set a sale date for the property so that the creditors could take the sale proceeds.
But when the property finally went to sale, Mr. Davet set up a shell company to win the auction, for $436,000. He couldn't pay more than the required $10,000 deposit, but the move delayed his eviction by months.
BEACHWOOD, Ohio - Faced with the threat of foreclosure, many homeowners abandon their homes.
Then there's Richard Davet.
He and his wife, Lynn, had lived in a six-bedroom home in this Cleveland suburb for nearly 20 years when, in 1996, he was served with a foreclosure lawsuit.
Flooding the courts with papers, Mr. Davet staved off foreclosure for 11 years, until January, 2007, when a county sheriff's deputy evicted the couple and changed the locks. They didn't make a mortgage payment the entire time.
"It was heaven on earth, an unbelievable property, and they took it from us like candy from a baby," he said.
Foreclosure actions typically take from a few months to a couple of years to get the borrower out of the home.
But more homeowners are delaying foreclosures by filing for bankruptcy on the eve of a court-ordered sale of the property, or refusing to answer the door when the plaintiff tries to "serve" them with a foreclosure lawsuit. They pay lawyers a few hundred dollars to file a motion that can buy them a little more time.
But few are as dogged as Mr. Davet.
And his fight may not be over yet. He is trying to get the charming 1940s house back, plus damages.
He's relying on the legal argument - currently making headlines - that a financial institution can file a foreclosure action only if it can prove it actually owns and holds the mortgage and promissory note.
A former jewelry-business owner, Mr. Davet and his wife, a former graphic-arts tutor, bought their house in 1978 for $150,000. As its value increased they borrowed against it.
They made their mortgage payments, but on one loan, they allegedly made payments late - 90 times, according to NationsBanc Mortgage Corp., which assessed the couple some $4,000 in late fees.
After the Davets for two years refused demands to pay the late fees, during which NationsBanc began refusing to accept their regular mortgage payments, the company sued for foreclosure.
At the time the couple owed $80,000 in principal, plus $160,000 on a second mortgage.
Mr. Davet insists the late fees were erroneous - he points to a deposition in which a NationsBanc employee conceded that the company couldn't back up its claims for a chunk of the fees. So he began his full-time crusade in the courts to keep his home.
He started with the help of lawyers, but those arrangements didn't last.
On his own, as a "pro se" litigant, Mr. Davet was undeterred. Four times a week he went to Case Western Reserve University School of Law to study legal writing and case law in its library.
Several years into the case, Bank of America, which had bought the owner of NationsBanc, took the unusual step of bringing in lawyers from a big corporate law firm, Jones Day.
Five years later, in 2005, a judge granted foreclosure in the amount Mr. Davet owed and set a sale date for the property so that the creditors could take the sale proceeds.
But when the property finally went to sale, Mr. Davet set up a shell company to win the auction, for $436,000. He couldn't pay more than the required $10,000 deposit, but the move delayed his eviction by months.
