They asked for help. They say the foreclosure clock kept ticking anyway
A Georgia couple is racing the clock to stop a May 5 foreclosure sale, accusing Bank of New York Mellon and servicer NewRez of pushing ahead while reviewing them for help.
The lawsuit, filed April 20 in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, names Bank of New York Mellon as trustee for the CWALT, Inc. Alternative Loan Trust 2005-60T1, along with NewRez LLC, which does business as Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing. The homeowners, Nathan Littleton and Valencia Price-Littleton, live on Mossey Drive in Lithonia and are handling the case on their own, without a lawyer.
Their account, as laid out in the court filing, reads like a timeline any servicing manager will recognize. In or around April 2025, Littleton suffered a serious medical emergency and lost the sight in one eye. The couple reached out for mortgage assistance on February 2, 2026, got a hardship package about ten days later, and - after being told the first submission never arrived - filled out a second one.
Then came the letters. On March 4, the foreclosure firm working for the servicer notified them that a sale had been set for May 5. Two days later, Shellpoint wrote back to confirm that their request for help had been received and was being reviewed. The foreclosure, they say, kept moving anyway.
That is the heart of the case. Federal rules under Regulation X generally bar a servicer from pressing toward a sale when a complete hardship application is sitting on its desk more than 37 days out. The couple argues that is exactly what happened here, and that no decision on their application was ever issued. They also claim the servicer never properly answered a written request for information about their loan.
The filing goes further. It questions whether the trust even has the authority to foreclose, pointing to a 2010 assignment that moved the security deed into a trust that had closed years earlier. That, they say, muddies the chain of title and leaves it unclear who the true creditor is. The lawsuit also points to the 2011 Countrywide settlement, in which the trustee of 530 mortgage-backed trusts reached an $8.5 billion deal over defective loans, arguing the trust cannot now collect twice.
The couple is asking for an emergency order blocking the May 5 sale, a ruling sorting out who holds what rights in the property, and damages under federal mortgage servicing law.
The case is Littleton v. Bank of New York Mellon, No. 1:26-cv-02143. These are allegations from an initial court filing, and the defendants have not yet responded. No court has ruled on the claims.
