Real Estate Attorney for Foreclosure Title and Lien Disputes in Los Angeles County

The trustee distributing money after a foreclosure sale does not investigate; it reads the county record and pays in the order the record shows. Real estate problems that were harmless while you owned the house, a lien never released, a co-owner who left, an association ledger nobody checked, become expensive at that moment. Fred Yadegar takes on the property questions a foreclosure raises for owners, heirs, and lienholders in Los Angeles County and Orange County, so that the record the trustee reads is accurate.

Title is the list the trustee pays from

Title is the recorded history of the property: every deed, every deed of trust, every lien, and every release. Civil Code §2924k pays the junior liens by priority before the former owner sees anything, and priority is decided by that history. Anything that makes the history unclear is a cloud: a paid loan whose deed of trust was never released, a judgment against a stranger with your name, a deed recorded outside the chain, or a gap in the chain itself.

A cloud does not resolve itself. A lien that should be dead can still claim the surplus, and it will be paid before you unless the record is corrected, and the trustee will not do that work.

The loan you paid off that nobody released

Civil Code §2941 puts the release on a clock. The lender has 30 days after payoff to send the payoff paperwork to the trustee; the trustee then has 21 days to record the reconveyance. Breaking that schedule exposes the violator to damages and a $500 statutory penalty. When the step was skipped, the old deed of trust still appears on title, and during the surplus process it looks like a live junior lien.

The fix depends on who still exists. A demand to the original lender or its successor may produce the reconveyance. If the lender is gone or will not respond, the tool is a quiet title action, in which the superior court is asked to determine who holds what interest in the property and to extinguish the claims that fail (Code Civ. Proc. §760.010 et seq.). The complaint must describe the property, the interest claimed, and each adverse claim to be extinguished (§761.020).

The association’s ledger

An association may record a lien for delinquent assessments together with late charges, interest, and the costs of collection, and the assessments become the owner’s debt from the day they are levied (Civ. Code §5650 et seq.). Foreclosure of that lien is off limits until the delinquent assessments total $1,800 or have been past due for more than 12 months (§5720), and an owner who loses a home that way has a 90-day right of redemption (§5715).

A lender’s trustee’s sale wipes the association’s lien from the title, but the debt for assessments that accrued during your ownership does not go away, so the association becomes a surplus claimant. Its claim is frequently padded with charges the statute does not allow or with months that belong to the new owner. We reconcile the ledger against the statute and object to the difference.

Co-owners who do not agree

Property owned by siblings who inherited together, by former spouses who never refinanced, or by partners in a venture that ended produces its own dispute when a sale generates a surplus. Each co-owner takes a share proportionate to the recorded ownership interest, but a co-owner who carried the mortgage, the taxes, or the repairs alone can claim credit for it.

When no agreement is possible, any co-owner may bring a partition action, in which the court is asked to divide the property or order it sold (Code Civ. Proc. §872.010 et seq.). The Partition of Real Property Act gives the co-owners who wish to keep the property an opportunity to purchase the interest of the one who wants to sell, at an appraised value, before a sale is ordered (§874.311 et seq.). The reimbursement accounting from partition law is the same accounting that decides how a surplus is divided after a trustee’s sale.

Lis pendens and the buyer at the auction

When a filed lawsuit puts title or possession in issue, a notice of pendency of action, commonly called a lis pendens, may be recorded against the property (Code Civ. Proc. §405.20). Later purchasers and lenders are bound by the result of the case. A lis pendens without a real claim behind it can be expunged on motion, with fees awarded (§405.30), so we record one only after the action is on file and the facts support it.

The investor who bought at the sale took title free of the foreclosing loan and every junior lien, but subject to any senior lien. A purchaser who gave fair value with no notice of a defect in the sale enjoys strong protection, which is why post-sale claims are usually for damages rather than for the house; what remedies remain after a defective sale and the priority contest itself each have their own page.

What to gather before you call

• The address, so we can order every document recorded against the property, or the documents themselves if you have them
• A rundown of every loan, association account, judgment, and tax debt that ever attached to the property, and whether each was paid
• Proof of payoff for any loan you satisfied, including any reconveyance you received
• Anything a buyer, lender, or recovery business has asked you to sign, unsigned
• The trustee’s notice, if one arrived, so we know how many days remain

Why this office

Fred Yadegar has been licensed to practice law in California since 2006, State Bar #244184, and works the title, lien, and co-owner problems that surround foreclosures in Los Angeles County and Orange County because they decide who is paid from the sale. A quiet title or partition action can run alongside the surplus claim itself, handled by the same attorney, and reading the recorded sale documents is explained on its own page. Tell us what is on the record and we will explain your options and the cost before you commit to anything.