Ballooning foreclosures tax court clerks, judges [South Florida]
For months, a ceaseless routine has gripped the St. Lucie clerk of court’s civil office: New mortgage foreclosure lawsuits arrive in unprecedented numbers – huge stacks, some a foot or 2 tall. But as soon as one stack is processed and emptied from the in-box, another dozen or more foreclosures show up the next day.
On really busy mornings, process servers drop off banks’ boxes filled with these documents, which set into motion a process that often means homeowners who haven’t paid their mortgages will lose their homes.
The clerks who process the cases shake their heads when they think back to the days when maybe two or three mortgage foreclosure lawsuits arrived each day. They don’t have to stretch their memories much: That was only about a year and a half ago.