ASC modification

[Joel Fraser]

Our story......... We have a 5 year old home in Florida which we refinanced 2 years ago with a mortgage at 7.75 which is scheduled to adjust in July 2009. A year ago in May, my husbands father passed away and we fell behind on 3 of our mortgage payments due to travel, funeral expenses, etc. We worked out a repayment plan with ASC to catch up the missed payments which was $700.00 more than our normal payment for 6 months. We were able to make all but the last payment which caused us to "break" the plan. In the meantime my husband who is a territory sales rep. for a food distributor was told by his company that they were restructuring their pay structure as of this past January. His salary and commision were both cut back which we found out is totally legal since he is not under contract with them. They promised the employees they would make more money on this new plan due to the fact that they were bringing in new products, etc. but that has not proven to be true so far and we are now two payments behind again. We worked another payment plan out with ASC which only required that we make 4 of our regular mortgage payments on time for the last 4 months and if we could do that, they would consider us for a loan mod. We made our last of the 4 payments on July 25th and called them as we were instructed to do. We were told that we would get a letter between the 22-25 of August to start the modification process and in the meantime not to make our monthly payment because that would throw off the calculations. We are around $5000.00 behind which includes the 2 payments and late fees. Since our house is currently valued at around $225,000 and we owe 249,000 it would not pay for us to pay an attorney close to $3,000 to assist us with this. I have a young son who suffers from debilitating migraine headaches which has made it difficult for me to work. We even had to go so far as choosing to homeschool him this year because he missed more than 50 days of school last year due to his headaches. ASC told me that what will most likely happen is that they will lock in the rate at the current 7.75 but not lower it since it has not adjusted yet. Due to the change in income, we are not going to be able to make the payment we currently have and we really need the payment to go down. Is there any hope of that happening? Has anyone else been told to not make their monthly payment while the process is in the works?