Borrowers falter despite lenient laws

In other states, the Boutchee family would have been kicked out of its home within months of its lender foreclosing last August. In Iowa, state law has allowed the family to remain in the home on Des Moines' northeast side for the last nine months.

Iowa's borrower-friendly foreclosure laws have long given distressed consumers more time than most others across the country to catch up on delinquent payments. Yet the court-driven legal process is now so choked with a record number of families sinking in debt, burdened by high legal costs and complicated by mixed messages from lenders that success stories like the Boutchees' have become the exception rather than the rule, experts say.

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