Please Help!

[temple]

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I am in Texas. If you own a home (on both deed and mtg) with someone you never married, and they file ch 7 bk, listing the home as a homestead, making it exempt, and you as a creditor, and they are discharged.....if they move out shortly after their filing and now sue 4 years after abandoning and making no payments on the home....BUT still claiming the mortgage interest as a deduction on their taxes each year (and yes, I have turned him into the IRS each year) they sue you for partition of the property......

Does their 1/2 of the payments they have not been making get subtracted from their equity? I am the person still in the house and have been keeping the payments current since the debtor left, and he is now sueing for partition on a debt he no longer has any responsibility for.

Is letting the home go into forclosure the only leverage I have in getting him to pay anything? (under the assumption it would be used as leverage for him to pay to bring it out of foreclosure in order to be able to obtain his half of the equity he is sueing me for)

Note that over the past four years he has kept me trapped, unwilling to sign off on the sale or rental or refi of the home, even though, through my atty, I have offered to pay him for the amount he put down on the house in an effort to buy him out.

What happens now and how can I keep the house?

 

[Michael Wechsler]

You have a complex situation and it is detail oriented. I can't give you answers, just observations.

1) It doesn't sound like he's going to pay anything and you can't force blood from a stone.

2) If you have an attorney, what does he suggest? Have you sued him for the amounts he has not paid off on the home? Does it equal or exceed the existing equity he had in the property?

 

[temple]

Thank you for your answer.
I am unable to sue him for any monies owed as he named me as a creditor in his chap 7, from which he has been discharged.
He has now sued me for partition of the property. The courts have ordered it sold, and are allowing us to work through our attys in order to sell it privately.
Last week he came and dug up the fence in the backyard and trees and shrubs in the front, causing the asking price of the property to go down. I fear he has realized any proceeds left from the sale will go to me, and therefore will shortly strip both the inside and outside of the property of everything of value.
As he has been discharged from the debt of the mortgage, if the sales price does not meet what is owed, the bank comes after me.
What can I do at this point?