JEFFERSON — Foreclosure notice? Mediation could help you keep your home sweet mortgaged home.

The Ashtabula County Joint Court Mediation Project has helped dozens of area homeowners who were facing foreclosure work out a deal with their lender and stay in their homes. The program is coordinated by Wendy S. Hawbaker and has been around since 1997, when the Supreme Court of Ohio provided grants for counties to institutionalize mediation services through local courts. Tammy Martin Kosier is mediation coordinator/mediator for the project, and handles most of the foreclosure mediations.

Hawbaker says they are seeing a shift in the factors that push homeowners into foreclosure. There are fewer cases of interest rates resetting and other subprime evils, and more issues connected to the economy.

“Now it’s people that don’t have jobs,” Hawbaker says.

In 2008 there were 153 foreclosure cases referred to the project for mediation and 50 cases were actually mediated. This year, 163 have been referred and 54 have been processed. About half of those have resulted in a new agreement between the lender and borrower.

“That’s a neighborhood,” says Common Pleas Court Judge Alfred Mackey, a big proponent of mediation.

“It helps people save their homes,” he says. “That’s the most important thing. We know there is a chance it can be worked out, and that’s very important.”

The mediators say foreclosure mediations account for one-third to one-half of the cases they handle. The mediation option becomes available when the lender sends a summons and complaint for foreclosure to the borrower. This notification comes with another form, request for foreclosure mediation, which, unfortunately, many borrowers ignore.

Rather, they often turn to debt-relief services advertised on radio and television that require the homeowner to pay substantial amounts of money up front to initiate the process. Legal action continues in the meantime and the debtor discovers that the company they hired to represent them fails to file an answer or work out a remedy.

Hawbaker says that money would be put to better use as a bargaining chip with the lender.

“Sometimes upfront funds are necessary to rekindle a loan modification,” Kosier says. “That’s a critical piece. It can stop the bank from negotiating if upfront funds are not there.”

Going the mediation route requires a willingness to make full disclosure of personal finances, gather the necessary documentation and approach the process with an open mind. A questionnaire must be completed and returned to the department concurrent with filing an answer to the foreclosure complaint with the clerk of courts. The mediation department then notifies the lender of the defendant’s desire to enter mediation.

At the session, a representative from the lender and/or attorney joins the mediator and the borrower at the table with legal representation. While it’s not necessary for the borrower to have an attorney, in most cases they will take that route to help them navigate the legal issues. In some cases, Legal Aid will assist defendants with some of the basic legal questions pertaining to a foreclosure action.

Hawbaker says that for many borrowers, the session is the first time they have person-to-person contact with someone from the bank that actually holds the mortgage on their home. Most mortgages are sold, packaged and re-sold to investors. While out-of-state mortgage holders are typically represented at the mediation session via a conference call, there have been instances where the parties agreed to fly in a representative to attend the session in person.

Mackey said there was a point where about 10 percent of the homes being foreclosed in the county had mortgages held by Deutsche Bank, and nearly as many were held by Wells Fargo, out-of-state lenders. He says that’s why mediation is so valuable, because it forces someone from these banks to come to the table, even if through a conference call. Once a date is set for the session, the lender has the responsibility to perform an assessment of the loan and appear.

Foreclosures involving the county’s only locally-owned commercial bank have been rare, but Mackey said when they’ve occurred and gone to mediation, the lender has been extremely cooperative.

One of the goals of these sessions is to examine financial documentation presented by the borrower and determine if reworking the terms of the loan is financially feasible.. Oftentimes, the mediator, by asking these pointed questions, can help the homeowner realize that their finances simply can’t support the house they are trying to save. She says infusing financial pragmatism into the situation can help the homeowner sever the emotional attachment to their home.

“There may be an unattainable expectation that they can keep their home,” Kosier says. “Even if they are not able to keep their house, they are making an empowered decision about the lack of feasibility. It restores dignity to what is often an undignified process.”

The mediation service is free, with the exception of a $150 court cost. Hawbaker says the issue of who assumes that cost is usually taken up in the mediation session, as well. In the case of foreclosures, it’s usually added to the sum the borrower must pay to reinstate or modify the loan.

“You don’t have to buy a ticket to get into the gate,” Mackey says.

The mediators stress that a homeowner facing foreclosure should at least investigate the process as a path to a solution.

“The whole idea of mediation is for people to exchange information, gain clarity,” Hawbaker says. “At a minimum, people are able to participate in the decision and the process.”