The Wanderings of a Fanciful Muse

I have this story posted in law_questions under the pseudonym of bumfuddled, so that various trolls don't find it and use our misfortune to make things worse.

You can also find a post in nebris' journal here. You will need to be on his flist to see it.

Here is what the situation is:

I moved to California in late 2006. I had a very hard time finding a mortgage due to being a newcomer and having debts that I had just freshly paid off. It didn't seem to matter that I had just paid off a mortgage in good standing.

Being desperate, I was open to anything, and our realtor offered us a deal involving a mobile home with a non-traditional contract where we would pay 12% interest on the balance owed, with the agreement that we would pay off the balance with a mortgage a year hence. Well, a year went by, the economy fell apart, and we couldn't get that mortgage. The company kept accepting our checks.

This was turning into a contract without end and we'd already paid them over $50,000. We sought to renegotiate but we had a very hard time getting a hold of anyone at this office. Finally, to get their attention, we sent them a certified letter stating that we were cutting the payment in roughly half and that my roommate would act as my designated representative (I'm poor, female. He's poor but male. You get the picture). They accepted the reduced payment, a few weeks went by, then my roommate got a call from the president of the company we had this agreement with. He was very uncooperative, and eventually hung up, claiming that he has to talk to his associates. We never heard back from him. Also, the man that we had the original agreement with (who, oddly enough, we never met) was no longer with the company.

Since cutting the payment got his attention the first time, we cut it by another $100. This time, we got a HANDWRITTEN NOTE with the check, informing us that the payment was short $100 (meaning that he agreed, by omission, to the lower payment, making the prior contract null and void) and that we were to stop sending the checks to the company, and start sending them to a strange woman he named in the letter.

It's quite obvious to us that the company is on the verge of bankruptcy and this man is attempting to hide his assets. The problem is, we're not exactly certain what to do about this situation. Do we simply stop paying him and force him to either surrender the debt or sue us for the balance, or what? We called Legal Aide for our county and they claim they cannot help us.

It's looking more and more like we're going to have to hire a lawyer to clear this up; problem is, we're both poor as dirt as you, my friends, are more than aware. If you can help us figure out where to get help for this, I'd be appreciative.

I've got emails dropped to the tax assessor for the county regarding the deed and finding out the history of ownership of this house (basically a self-done title search). I have also dropped an email to the Predatory Lending office of the FHA. I haven't heard anything back yet. I've also posted to findlaw.com.

I am trying to recover from a major infection involving teeth (again) and this is just making things worse. I might end up on a month's worth of antibiotics yet again thanks to this jackass.