Stealing the American Dream or Chasing it?

Yes, we have been having major mortgage issues. Failure to meet the minimum payments, resulted in the mortgage company increasing our mortgage payments. They call this a forbearance plan but what it consists of is dividing the back payments equally among several regular payments, then requesting the balance late payable in 4 months. The plan would create a 20k deficit in our monthly budget, and as I've heard on a t.v. commercial, there is no budge in our budget. We hired an attorney to modify our mortgage and sent them the money, they did not fulfill the contractual services and closed up shop with our money in hand and disappeared. Then we received the forbearance agreement, in writing, in the mail. Upon further inspection we noticed the payments were ridiculous and the terms stated if we did not meet the payment arrangements foreclosure will continue. We were left with a major decision, fight and possibly lose, or just give in and let the house go.

If our situation would be any different, I would tell the mortgage company exactly where they could put the keys to our home, but this house was purchased majorly with the proceeds from a house my husband's mother left him when she passed away. Our home was also carefully picked because of the school system available for our son. He has friends here and he is excelling in school, so tearing him away from his life is not an option, so we continue to fight. Retaining a new attorney to hopefully lower our mortgage payments (which they claim could be as low as half of our current payment amount).

My husband's son (my step-son) recently became aware his wife had an unfaithful evening and has filed for divorce. This is an exceptionally uncomfortable situation for me because his wife and I have a fairly decent relationship and I do not want to bad mouth him nor her. Neither of them have had a great experience with marriage and have both come from dysfunctional divorced upbringings. They have learned from their experiences that when someone hurts you, you hurt them back twice as much. This has played out in their marriage for the last two years and the 2 or 3 years prior to their marriage. Our fear is that their inept communication skills will rub off on their son and he will endure a lifetime of poor communication skills.

More drama this week...I'm an online student and my wonderful PC was infected by a most destructive worm, rendering it dead. I was trying to submit homework via two different computers, completing homework on one PC which had the necessary programs and attaching via USB through another PC connected to the Internet but did not contain any of the Microsoft programs needed to actually do the homework. I did this for two days before I broke down and drove the hour to the closest electronics store to purchase a new laptop. Now that I am back up and running, I found out that some of my assignments did not attach. I turned them in late and now on top of the bill for the laptop I have a reduced grade to deal with.

We have also been battling infertility as well as a few other health issues. Finding out that my biological features are not working properly and that his biological functions are not functioning properly leaves us little option to have another child. On top of the emotional toll this plays both singularly and as a couple, the only options available to us are far from affordable. I believe it is a crime to regulate fertility treatments. Having children should not be only available to the rich. Some of the greatest individuals in our history have come from poor or moderate income backgrounds.