Mike doesn't tackle this directly, but his story reminds me of perhaps the hardest things I see in my practice -- people who don't come see a lawyer even when they're in the middle of the fight of their lives and they're facing battalions of lawyers on the other side, and who had a fixable problem -- before they started trying to take care of it themselves without an attorney.
I know it might sound self-serving but I don't mean it that way - I am plenty busy and not trying to drum up business. But I just want you to know: if you are falling behind on your mortgage or getting screwy statements that suggest your mortgage servicer isn't crediting your payments properly, or you have received ANY letters from ANYONE suggesting your home loan could be in default, you need to find a lawyer to help you understand what's going on, and what will happen. Not a notario, not a friend of a friend who went to law school but doesn't practice, not a paralegal, but a real, licensed attorney who does foreclosure defense (like Mike, for example).
Sure, there are books you can find discussed on Internet Law School about how the brave lone homeowner successfully ran off the criminal gang of bank thieves, but generally, what happens in those situations (where the homeowner tries to DIY their own mortgage defense) is that they wind up as roadkill on the foreclosure freeway with the lender happy as a clam that the homeowner didn't bring in a real attorney and slow down the foreclosure machine.
Sometimes it's even worse: the poor homeowner starts the DIY thing, lets a bunch of deadlines pass, and then finally realizes that they are over their head and the DIY thing isn't working and comes to see an attorney -- too late.
Even if you think you can only afford a single consult, make it the FIRST thing you do, AS SOON AS you get that very first letter from someone telling you that your home might be foreclosed.