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Quick AnswerIn July 2026, on reargument, Justice Menachem M. Mirocznik of the Supreme Court, Kings County, adhered to the dismissal as time-barred of a Brooklyn foreclosure that Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee, filed in September 2022. The first foreclosure on the mortgage, filed by the lender at the time on October 16, 2009, called the full debt due and started New York's six-year clock. The bank argued that an August 1, 2010 loan modification, which had set the principal balance at $591,731.77, restarted it. The court held that, even measured from the modification, the time ran out on or about August 1, 2016, and that the modification could not bind the co-owner who never signed it. It kept in place the denial of the bank's request to amend its complaint and directed the Clerk to cancel the notices of pendency filed against the property.
In October 2006, one of our clients signed a note for $412,750, secured by a mortgage on a Brooklyn property our two clients own together. On October 16, 2009, the lender at the time started a foreclosure and called the full debt due. That case was discontinued in 2011.
Deutsche Bank National Trust Company, as trustee, filed this foreclosure on September 23, 2022. We moved for summary judgment dismissing it as barred by the statute of limitations, and in July 2025 the court agreed. The bank did not accept that. It asked the court to reargue the ruling and to let it amend its complaint to add a loan modification dated August 1, 2010, which had set the principal balance at $591,731.77.
A New York lender has six years to foreclose once the debt is accelerated, and filing a foreclosure that demands the full balance accelerates it. Here the clock started on October 16, 2009.
The bank's way around that was the 2010 modification. It argued the modification revoked the earlier acceleration and started the clock over. Since the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act of 2022, the court explained, the only way a written agreement can extend the time to foreclose is by meeting the requirements of General Obligations Law 17-105.
Justice Menachem M. Mirocznik let the bank reargue, took a fresh look and ruled for our clients again.
Upon reargument, however, the Court adheres to its determination.Supreme Court, Kings County, Decision, Order and Judgment, July 2026
Start with the dates. Even if the 2010 modification counted as a written promise to pay, it could only start a new six-year period running from the day it was signed. The first payment under the modification, due September 1, 2010, was never made, and the loan stayed in default. Six years from August 1, 2010 ran out on or about August 1, 2016. The bank sued in September 2022, "approximately six years after the limitations period had already run."
Then there is the co-owner. She never signed the mortgage or the modification, and her interest in the property came first. The court held the modification could not bind her. As an owner of the property she was an indispensable party, so the foreclosure could not go forward without her, and the complaint was dismissed in its entirety.
The court also pointed out that the bank's papers never addressed HSBC Bank USA, N.A. v Mohammed, the Second Department decision most directly against it, calling that "a remarkable silence." With the case time-barred either way, adding the modification to the complaint would have changed nothing. The court called the proposed amendment "patently devoid of merit."
Both bars start on August 1, 2010, the date of the loan modification the bank relied on. The first foreclosure had called the loan due on October 16, 2009.
The record, in order: what a modification can do, when the bank filed, and what the court held on each argument.
Under CPLR 213(4) a foreclosure must be brought within six years once the debt is accelerated, and filing a foreclosure that demands the full balance accelerates it. Here the clock started on October 16, 2009.
Since the Foreclosure Abuse Prevention Act of 2022, a written agreement can extend the time to foreclose only by meeting the requirements of General Obligations Law 17-105. It was the bank's job to show that, "a burden plaintiff failed to meet."
Even if a modification counts as a written promise to pay, it starts only a new six-year period from the day it was signed. Measured from August 1, 2010, the period "expired on or about August 1, 2016." The bank sued in September 2022.
Under General Obligations Law 17-105(3), such a promise is effective only against the person who made it and people who later acquire that person's interest. The co-owner never signed the modification and held her interest first, so it was "in any event not effective" against her. Without her, the foreclosure could not go forward.
The court let the bank reargue and then adhered to its ruling. With the case time-barred either way, adding the modification to the complaint could not help the bank.
We see banks point to a loan modification to argue that a stale foreclosure is still alive. This decision says a modification does not quietly restart the clock. It counts only if it meets the statute, and even then the lender gets six years from the modification and no more.
Six years sounds like a long time. In a foreclosure that drags on, with cases filed, dropped and filed again, it can pass without anyone noticing. Here it ran out in 2016, and the bank did not sue until 2022.
Ownership matters too. If someone else is on the deed and never signed the modification, the modification may not reach that person's interest at all.
If the first foreclosure against your home was filed many years ago, get the dates in front of a foreclosure defense attorney.
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