Who advocates for me?

We have received plenty of offers to help us navigate the waters of this financial nightmare. The filing of the Notice of Default was the chum in the water that brought them all circling. Some try to appear as official looking documents, others use a handwriting font in an effort to appear to be very personal; one particularly clever one was a postcard with a bright, splashy graphic of a witch being squashed by a fallen house. There are few secrets between us and our mailman any longer (I wonder if they are allowed to received Christmas "gifts").

I used to work in mortgage financing and decided that perhaps I should reach out to someone still employed in the lending industry for a recommendation. A former boss of mine was happy to provide me with the name of a real estate attorney who offers consultations for a flat $200 fee. I have already ruled out any and all options that do not include attempting to hold onto the home so the advice I am looking for is pretty narrow- Does our situation warrant our inclusion in a loan modification program, and is there anything that appears in the documents we can use to force our lender to negotiate one with us?

I decided to call the attorney and see if there was a reason to schedule a consultation. There were two things I wanted to clear up before making the appointment-a) Should I need more than just advice would they also represent me under a retainer or hourly fee structure, and b) While I wasn't looking for the attorney's actual recommendations prior to scheduling (ie paying for) the consultation, I had hoped they might agree to look at a summary of the facts, and keeping my objective in mind, simply tell me if there was any advice they would be able to offer me when we actually did sit down. Yes, of course, they would be willing to convert a flat fee consultation into paid representation (duh), but no, they would not be willing to review my situation in advance to determine if they could actually offer me any valuable advice. I was disappointed at this, and soon found myself mulling over whether or not I should even be hesitating dropping $200 for professional, informed, legal advice when the stakes where so high. This did not seem the time to be cheap, but I have paid for legal advice in the past and found it be- what shall I say-lacking in enthusiasm. I appreciate the patience the gal on the phone demonstrated with me as I contemplated my decision, and was just about to book the appointment when I looked up at the top of their webpage. Attorneys will often post an article or something which can be useful and perhaps even somewhat telling. I click on the link for Resources- it says "Coming Soon", next to it is Library-same thing, Preferred Affiliates-also says"Coming Soon", followed by Shop and Cart-those are active links. I thanked the woman for her time and allowed her to get to the next phone call from a desperate homeowner looking to save their home. Two hundred dollars is a pretty good price point for selling hope. 

How many cracks can one loan slip through?

A link to my communications log with BofA will be inserted <here>.

Meanwhile I wanted to save this link, and this link to the blogs of other distressed homeowners.