{"id":19852,"date":"2018-08-09T14:02:41","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T14:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/08\/09\/what-troops-can-learn-from-this-marine-veterans-foreclosure-fight\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:30:59","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:30:59","slug":"what-troops-can-learn-from-this-marine-veterans-foreclosure-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/home-hq\/2018\/08\/09\/what-troops-can-learn-from-this-marine-veterans-foreclosure-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"What troops can learn from this Marine veteran\u2019s foreclosure fight"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Marine veteran fighting a 2010 foreclosure lost a round in court last month, as a panel of judges ruled he acted too late to invoke financial protections offered to active-duty service members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jacob McGreevey refinanced the loan on his Vancouver, Washington, home in 2006, according to documents from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He deployed to Iraq in 2009 and returned in 2010, when he requested another refinance; he told OregonLive.com<\/a> that he\u2019d missed payments and was expecting the foreclosure procedures that began in August 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He wasn\u2019t aware of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which prohibits lenders from initiating foreclosure proceedings<\/a> on military personnel serving on active duty without a court order. The current act extends this protection up to nine months after leaving active service, down from a year at the time of McGreevey\u2019s foreclosure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But regardless of the protection time, McGreevey didn\u2019t know about the act until learning about it while in business school; he didn\u2019t invoke the act until filing a complaint in 2016, after he\u2019d left service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SCRA<\/a> doesn\u2019t have a statute of limitations. In such instances, per the court\u2019s ruling, judges seek legal precedence to determine what a reasonable statute would be: McGreevey\u2019s lawyer pointed to acts with six-year statutes, while lawyers for his lender suggested a four-year limit based on an existing Washington state law.<\/p>\n\n\n\t