Norwich Law Blog

A report published by the real estate data company ATTOM Data Solutions captures how foreclosure rates declined across the United States during November of this year. They decreased 13% from what they were in October. Those same statistics show that there were 11% fewer foreclosures this year than at the same time last year. The one index that hasn't experienced as much of a decline is the bank repossession rate. It's currently 22% higher than it was a year ago.

The number of homes that became real estate owned (REO) properties, or taken back over by lenders, in November of this year was 13,996 units. The number of properties recovered by banks went down 27% last month from what it was the previous year.

Judges presiding over most family law courts throughout the United States realize just how important it is for a child's biological parents to be in their lives. This is why most every state including Connecticut has laws on the books that all parents must follow to establish their parentage and seek out visitation or custody of their kids.

]Babies who are born to married parents are automatically assumed to be the biological offspring of both the mother and the father. Under the law, a married father's paternity is "presumptive," or valid until somehow disproven. When a child's parents aren't married, however, the father has to establish paternity before being eligible to formally request visitation or custody of their child through the court.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy generally involves liquidation of a filer's assets. This leads many people to think that they're required to turn over all of their belongings to the court to be sold off to pay creditors. This isn't the case though. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court classifies the property as either exempt or nonexempt when deciding what can be kept or what must be sold.

Property that falls into the exempt category is anything that would generally be referred to as necessities. A portion of the equity in your home, unpaid wages, personal injury damages and pensions all are considered as exempt property. Unemployment, Social Security and public assistance that may be accumulated in a bank account may be exempt as well.

If you've ever wondered why it takes so long to close on a property between the contract signing to the closing is finally scheduled, it's because there's a lot that happens in between one step and the other.

Before you signed your purchase agreement, your realtor should have explained that your buyer's contract contains three primary contingencies in it.