Yes. The moment you file bankruptcy, the automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. §362 stops a Florida foreclosure in its tracks — even a sale scheduled for that same day. Chapter 7 buys you time; Chapter 13 goes further, letting you catch up the missed payments over a three-to-five-year court-approved plan while you keep the house.

The Automatic Stay: An Instant Federal Injunction

Florida is a judicial foreclosure state, which means your lender must sue you in state court and win a judgment before the home can be sold at auction. Bankruptcy interrupts that lawsuit at any stage. The instant your petition is filed, federal law imposes the automatic stay — 11 U.S.C. §362 — which prohibits creditors from continuing collection actions, including foreclosure lawsuits and foreclosure sales. No hearing is needed and no judge has to sign anything; the stay takes effect by operation of law the moment the case is filed.

Timing matters enormously. The stay stops a sale that hasn’t happened yet, but it cannot undo one that has. If your home has a scheduled auction date, filing even hours before the sale stops it — filing the day after does not bring the house back.

Chapter 13: Stop the Sale and Cure the Arrears

For homeowners who want to keep the house, Chapter 13 is usually the stronger tool. Under 11 U.S.C. §1322(b)(5), your repayment plan can “cure” the default — spreading the missed payments, the arrears, over the life of a three-to-five-year plan — while you resume your regular monthly mortgage payment going forward. Complete the plan and your mortgage is contractually current, as if the default never happened. The lender must accept this; it cannot insist on a lump sum.

This is how Chapter 13 turns a foreclosure emergency into a structured catch-up schedule: a homeowner $30,000 behind can cure that amount at roughly $500 a month over five years instead of losing the home.

Chapter 7: A Pause, Not a Cure

Chapter 7 also triggers the automatic stay and stops the foreclosure, but it has no mechanism for curing arrears over time. It can wipe out the unsecured debts — credit cards, medical bills — that were crowding out your mortgage payment, and for some families that alone makes the mortgage affordable again. But if you cannot get current, the lender can ask the court to lift the stay or simply resume foreclosure after the case ends. Chapter 7 is often the right choice when the goal is time to relocate or negotiate, rather than long-term retention.

Limits to Know Before You File

The stay is powerful but not unconditional. The lender can file a motion for relief from stay, and if you have no equity and no realistic cure plan the court may grant it. Repeat filings are restricted too: if a prior bankruptcy case was dismissed within the past year, the new stay expires after 30 days unless the court extends it. A bankruptcy filed on the eve of a sale should be part of a real strategy — not a stalling tactic the court will see through.

Stopping a Foreclosure in Miami-Dade County

Miami-Dade foreclosures are filed in the county circuit court, begin with a lis pendens recorded with the Clerk, and end at the Clerk’s online foreclosure auction — so a Miami homeowner can watch a sale date approach on the Miami-Dade Clerk’s website in real time. A bankruptcy petition filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida — Miami division, at the C. Clyde Atkins U.S. Courthouse on North Miami Avenue — stops that county auction immediately, because the federal stay overrides the state case. Arturo R. Alfonso P.A. has spent over 35 years helping Miami families use Chapter 13 to save their homes, in English and Spanish. If a sale date is looming and you’re searching for a bankruptcy attorney near me, call before the auction — not after.

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