Progress made in moving foreclosures, but courts brace for even more filings to come.

An affidavit signed in California, but notarized in Minnesota, is hard for a judge to ignore--even when the foreclosure is uncontested.

That testimony was part of a presentation to the Senate Banking and Insurance Committee in December by judges and lawyers toiling in Florida's foreclosure morass.

The courts are making progress in tackling the huge backlog of foreclosure cases--thanks in large part to supplemental legislative funding--but defective paperwork is still a big problem, and another wave of home foreclosure filings looms on the horizon.

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The judges said faulty and fraudulent documentation is the main cause of delays, and the courts are bracing for an anticipated deluge of commercial foreclosures in the coming year. Court officials also discussed the limitations of the Supreme Court-ordered managed mediation program.

And a representative of the Bar's Real Property, Probate and Trust Law Section told the panel the section is working on remedies to move uncontested foreclosures through the process quicker and reiterated opposition to nonjudicial foreclosures.

Sen. Garrett Richter, R-Naples, the committee's chair, soberly noted approximately 14 percent of Florida mortgages are in foreclosure and over 23 percent are "past due in one form or another." He said those numbers are placing "significant stress and strains" on the judicial system's ability to resolve foreclosure cases in a timely manner.

Twelfth Circuit Chief Judge Lee Haworth, chair of the Judicial Administrative Committee made up of the state's 20 chief judges, said the courts are making headway in reducing the backlog, but more cases continue to be filed.

Haworth said the legislatively created Foreclosure and Economic Recovery Funding Initiative, providing an additional $6 million to help the trial courts try to reduce the state's staggering foreclosure backlog, was used to hire case managers, magistrates, and senior judges.

Without that money, the courts would have continued to fall even further behind, said 11th Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey, who chaired the Supreme Court's Task Force on Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Cases.

"We have finally turned that corner of closing more cases than are coming in," said Bailey. She cautioned, though, that could change without additional resources because another bump-up in foreclosures is expected as adjustable rate mortgages and other exotic loans made in 2007 begin resetting in May.

"The process-servers tell...