Good morning, everybody. I received so many questions about this topic. I decided to make a video specifically about it, who needs to be named and served in foreclosure actions. A non-attorney discussion about four to Florida foreclosures. I'm not an attorney, but I am after Stein, specialized pockets of knowledge. Welcome. I hope you learn a little bit something here. Let's go forward. So this is people who parties, who need to be named and served in foreclosure actions in Florida. Okay. Let's see. The background, a foreclosure lawsuit has been filed by a lender or a mortgagee to take possession of the security for their mortgage. Foreclosure is proceeded by a default by the homeowner. So what's happened is, is that the homeowner? Does it make a payment or two? Generally three or four, because lenders nowadays are going to try to work with the homeowner before they decide to foreclose. But in this event for this video, the ho the homeowner is going to be foreclosed out. The lender is decided they're going to file a foreclosure action. And that's where we start necessary parties to a foreclosure. Any party with recorded interest in the property must be named within the foreclosure complaint as well as personally served with the lawsuit. So what that means is that you have a recorded interest. Now, interest doesn't always mean ownership and interest could be you're a contractor, and you have a mechanic's lien against the, because you didn't get paid. You could be a judgment holder. You could be some of the torpor creditor. You can be a city lien. There's lots of items that will appear in the county records. Uh, and those parties appearing will have a interest in the property. When a party is served. This means that an individual authorized to provide service of court documents personally delivers the documents to the named party. So I'm sure most of you have heard of the term process server. A process server will deliver a copy of the complaint and a summons if it's county court, uh, and a cover letter, all kind of stuff, but their process server will deliver the documents to the party named and identified by the attorney. Now there's also one caveat here that a, an interest in real property must be recorded unless you're the occupant Of the real property. It won't show up if you're an owner and then you have a deed, but what if you're a tenant? If you're a tenant, you have rights to that. Property based on the lease, most leases are not recorded. That's why the process server, when they go to the property and knock on the door, they will ask you to identify yourself and determine whether you are a property owner, a visitor, or a tenant, because the tenant will be then listed as an unknown party. And they may be, their name may be changed in the complaint. I don't know that that's legal stuff. I'm not authorized to give you, but they'll be named and served. Also only their name will be unnamed tenant. Okay. Let's change sides. How has the identity of the party discovered? So we're looking for the identity of all the parties that need to be served. So all documents involving real estate in Florida must be recorded in order to perfect their lien position. In other words, if you have a claim against real property and that's the best claim to have versus having a claim against my sofa, um, you have to record it so most people will record their interest in real property, no matter what it is for other documents that says judgments, they must be perfected, validated, and rerecorded to act as a lien on real property. That's why a lot of debtors like Florida, Florida is known as a debtor state simply because judgements don't collect themselves. The plaintiff in a judgment has got to take steps to collect the money that's owed to them. And one of the steps they have to take is they have to have their final judgment perfected. And this is not a class on final judgments, but it's a couple step process and it has to be renewed every 10 years. So it's a process. So if you have a judgment take my judgment course. Okay. So let's see whatever's next. W whenever the purchase of real estate occurs in Florida, and there is a mortgage within the transaction, the lender will always insist that they're in first position this way, that if they have to foreclose or enforce their lien, they are guaranteed to get paid off one way or another. What that means is that, and I'm sure you're familiar with this every time there's a buyer for real estate, and they get a conventional loan VA FHA bank of America, mortgage broker lent. It doesn't matter that lender needs to be certain that they're in first position. Why do they want to be in first position? Because they realized that the, whatever equities in that property and whatever they decided, the security for that loan was going to be, it's always going to be there unless you're a second mortgage. You, because if you're a second mortgagee, your qualifications for that buyer are a little more stringent because now you're behind the first. So a first mortgage, he always wants to be a first mortgage E so they make sure that they are it's up to the title company to make sure that they're recorded first and then the deed second, but that's a story for another day, but that's how it's discovered. Wow. That was a couple of magic tricks that I didn't even know I had in my bag. Let's change slides and get out of here before I hurt myself. All right. I'll pause the video. It'll pause. I won't even pause. There we go. Made it to the next slide. I'm sorry for that. I don't know how to edit. So we have to go with what we got. Okay. Why must each party be named and serve? Okay. A party can't be served unless they're named that's, obviously, unless you know the identity, you can't get him served. Identifying the property. Proper party is the responsibility of the foreclosing attorney. However, it's such a critical task that most attorneys order, what's called a foreclosure Tyler report to identify the parties. The attorney will gladly pay 300, 400, whatever they want, because they're going to pass the cost on, but they want somebody else that this is all they do is establish foreclosure Tata reports to tell them who to get named and who to serve. Because if that gets screwed up, the liability is too big, too much. So let's see. What's the next line of party needs to be personally served in order for the court to gain jurisdiction over them. In this context, jurisdiction can also mean authority because without service, the court would have no authority over that party. In other words, if you are not served, then you are not subject to the orders coming out of the foreclosure court. You're not a party, even though your name to put, if you're not served, the court has no jurisdiction over you. What are the consequences of an unnamed and or unserved party? Any party that is unnamed and unserved will not be foreclosed out. If you didn't get notice, if you didn't get served process, then your rights cannot be foreclosed out, whatever they are. So whatever your rights were before the foreclosure remained intact. If you were not served with process. In other words, you did not know that could be a second mortgagee who doesn't get served. Their second mortgage is still in. It's the same priority it was before. And your rights are exactly what they were before the foreclosure, a properly perfected and recorded final judgment. Well, that's interesting because in Florida, a final judgment will not attach to a homestead. So you can't foreclose now that you were missed because your rights remain intact because that's more rights than your final judgment had given you in the first place. So you can't move up in the amount of rights that you have, but you'll always have the rights that you had prior to the foreclosure. If you were unnamed and or unserved, same thing with the mechanics lien, it doesn't go away. It doesn't get full and closed out. Now, I remember one time we bought a property and I can't remember the name of the attorney, but as I was doing my title search, we bought something and I found something that I missed on the way in that we picked up on the way out. And, um, We had to re foreclose. So it's not like there's a, there's no remedy for this. Uh, we foreclosed will be foreclosed. The man, it didn't take too long or cost too much money. But the one thing you have to understand if you're buying foreclosures and with regard to the parties named and served, the plaintiff's attorney, who's working for the bank wants to get clear title for their client. So they're not going to try to miss parties on purpose. It's an accident if somebody misses a party, but if you're the buyer of a foreclosure at a foreclosure sale, you're allowed to stand in the shoes of the plaintiff. In other words, your position now is, goes right to what the plaintiff have. If they were first mortgagee, you get to be that person. And you can re foreclose out that lien that was missed by simply giving them service and giving them 20 days to answer the whole nine yards. Or you could buy them off one way or the other. You have a remedy, which is reasonable. Okay? In summary, all parties with recorded interest in the subject party must be named within the body of the foreclosure complaint, as well as personally served with a copy of the foreclosure complaint. That's done by a process server. This is necessary for the court to obtain jurisdiction over every party. Any party not served will not be foreclosed out and their lien rights will remain the same as they were prior to the foreclosure. And before we leave, I gotta make sure that you know, that I am not an attorney. This is not legal advice. These are just things that I observed as a foreclosure investor. And I want to pass this knowledge as limited as it might be on to all my fellow investors. So that's it. Bye bye for now. I'll see you on the next one. This is Alfred Einstein with pockets of specialized knowledge, please visit your local real estate club. Remember you don't know what you don't know. Please visit my website, www.pofsk.com. Lot of knowledge there for free. Again, thank you very much for stopping by and I'll see you on the next one. Happy investing.
