Am I liable for any past due payments when my house goes into forecloser

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but your credit is already ruined once you get to this point and cannot pay for the mortgage. To answer your question, YES, they can come after you for the missed payments and the deficency from the foreclosure sale. What this means is when your home is sold at foreclosure sale, whatever the sale price doesn't cover, they can come after you for that amount. Basically your mortgage is worth say $200,000.00, and sold at foreclsoure auction for $100,000.00, then you will owe the bank $100,000.00 and have no home, just the debt.  If the bank can't collect the debt from you, which they most likely will not even try, in that case they write it off to the IRS to take it off their taxes and then the IRS sends you a 1099 for that amount. Basically the 1099 will go towards that years taxes as if you earned an extra $100,000.00 in that tax year, which will have you owe approximately $34,000.00 to the IRS which cannot be discharged right away in bankruptcy. The way you could prevent this is to file Chapter 7 Bankruptcy BEFORE the house is sold at a foreclosure sale and discharge the debt, so when they do sell the home, you will not owe the debt and therefore not responsible for the defecency or the 1099 taxes ramifications.   I have responded to your inquiry according to the laws of Massachusetts, where my firm is located. Laws can vary significantly from state to state and cases tend to be rather fact-specific, so you are best served by consulting with a knowledgeable attorney in weighing your options. Email messages/Online Correspondence are akin to conversations and do not reflect the level of analysis applied to formal legal opinions. Email/Online responses do not form an attorney-client relationship.    Joseph F. Botelho, Esq. BOTELHO LAW GROUP Attorneys At Law http://fallriverbankruptcyattorney.com/ 901 Eastern Ave.  Unit 2 Fall River, MA 02723  Office:  888-269-0688 FAX:    877-475-8147