Battling creditors on the home front

WASHINGTON -- When Steve Welter, an Army reservist, was called up for active duty in Iraq last August, his wife, Keira, never thought she would fight to save the family home from foreclosure.

A 65-year-old federal law, which Congress expanded last year, provides protection for activated reservists and for Guard members called up by the Pentagon. That includes a 6 percent cap, under certain circumstances, on consumer and mortgage interest rate debt incurred before activation; protection from eviction or foreclosure; payment deferral for federal taxes; and a stay on civil proceedings, including divorce and bankruptcy.

Keira Welter knew the law was supposed to protect a soldier's property from creditors during active military service. But for months, she said, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage Co. did not seem to care about the law. ''We had worked so hard to own our own home, and while my husband was over there serving our country it was going to be taken away," said Welter, 31, of Osawatomie, Kan.

After Wells Fargo started foreclosure proceedings in February, Keira Welter contacted the state attorney general's office and members of Congress. It was not until a local television station aired her story and Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, intervened that the company backed off.

The Welters are not the only ones to face hurdles while seeking protection under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Woolpert, a legal adviser to the Kansas National Guard, said he fields calls every week from soldiers and families trying to understand their rights under the law and asking how they can stop creditors from repossessing cars or seizing homes.

''We had a foreclosure that was actually going to occur the next day," Woolpert said. ''It was going to happen until we could generate the letters and get them to the company and say, 'Please stop this; it's not a valid foreclosure.' Wisdom prevailed."

The military is quick to let families know about the law as part of the briefing soldiers get before they are deployed.

But the help is not automatic. Soldiers and sailors have to request it and provide proof of their callup. Woolpert said the soldiers are given letters to creditors.

Kevin Waetke, a spokesman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in Des Moines, said the company has apologized to Welter and dismissed the foreclosure action.

The Welters' case was unusual, Woolpert said, because most big lenders are familiar with the law.

''With large lending institutions . . . it becomes a bureaucratic problem," Woolpert said. ''Sometimes it's hard to find the right person to say 'Stop this because the rule applies.' "