When something unforeseen happens to a homeowner--and unforeseen things happen to all of us every day--the financial results can be catastrophic. The loss of a job, an unexpected serious illness or accident, of even the steadily increasing monthly payments brought about by an adjustable rate mortgage may be enough to make meeting those monthly payments impossible.

And unless you've somehow found a way to set aside money for emergencies, you'll be faced with either trying to sell your home, or see it go into foreclosure, as soon as you are sufficiently behind in those mortgage payments.

While homeowners have alternatives to help them stop home foreclosures, those alternatives carry consequences whish may have a dramatic affect on the homeowners' future financial prospects. If you should happen to become delinquent in your house payments, your mortgage holder will typically allow you a period of time to clear delinquent amount. But lending institutions can, at their discretion, make a demand that your mortgage be paid in full.

Having to pay off your entire mortgage, unless you only have a few mortgage payments left, is probably beyond your means; if you had that kind of money, you wouldn't be delinquent in your payments. When you get a demand to pay it off, your lender is very likely setting the stage for a home foreclosure proceeding.

What can you do? If you want to stop home foreclosures against you, contact a bankruptcy attorney and discuss a Chapter 13 bankruptcy filing. By filing a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you will automatically stops home foreclosures actions from being initiated against you, and be given a period of between three and five years in which to repay all your debts. You will be able to pay off your delinquent house payments, and can stay in Chapter 13 as long as you make your future payments on time.

Keep Up With Your Payments To Keep Your House It's essential, if you want to stop home foreclosures after you have filed a Chapter 13 bankruptcy, to make your current monthly payments to your lender and payments on your debts to the Court bankruptcy trustee as scheduled. You can stay in your home as long as you do; for Chapter 13 filers who do not, however, trying to stop home foreclosures is useless.

In some states the lawmakers are now examining the loans made by predatory lending companies to borrowers who were clearly unqualified, and considering options to stop home foreclosures from being initiated when those borrowers cannot make their monthly payments. Some of those lenders had even gone to such lengths as saddling the borrowers with double payments, by getting them loans for both their down payments and their loan balances, while being fully aware that the borrowers would eventually have to default.

The lawmakers are investigating the possibility that such lenders made double loans simply to ensure that they would have a regular supply of home foreclosures to sell on a continuing basis, providing themselves with regular incomes, and are looking for ways to stop home foreclosures from being abused in this fashion.