If you house is worth less than what you owe on your mortgage, your mortgage is considered underwater. The Obama administration has given banks numerous incentives to renegotiate mortgages and help people keep their homes. What have the banks done? Jacked up your credit card interest rates and paid out billions in employee bonuses. Some bailout.

Governments and banks don’t want you to exercise your legal options in foreclosure or bankruptcy. They would rather you empty your 401(k) to pay for an asset that will jeopardize your retirement and put your family at risk.

Politicians want us to buy houses instead of rent. People tied to a home are more easily controlled. You can’t quit a job you hate when that mortgage comes due each month.

Let’s address the ethical and moral side of mortgage default.

People lose sleep at night, fight with their spouses, and look for a divorce lawyer when they can’t pay their bills. How is this sinful?

Almost no one except identity thieves sign a mortgage with no intention of paying anything back. You intentions were pure, but circumstances change.

ARMs reset resulting in higher payments. Companies downsize. Jobs are lost. People get sick. Family breadwinners die.

Preachers and politicians will quote the Bible to convince you to pay, even if you have to put your family’s finances at risk. What they fail to mention is that the Bible also said to forgive debts every 7 years (reason 7 years was chosen in the first bankruptcy code).

Does it make financial or even moral sense to waste money on a depreciated asset?

Paying way more on your mortgage than you could pay for the same space rented is stealing resources from your family and jeopardizing your financial future.

Banks charge interest on money they lend to you. A mortgage is a simple loan, a contract. They take a risk and have specified remedies.

In some states, the bank can sell the foreclosed house and sue you for the money they lost by lending to you – called a deficiency judgment. Banks will sometimes obtain a deficiency judgment even if they agreed to a short sale.

If your state allows deficiency judgments, you may have to turn to Chapter 13 bankruptcy to have your mortgage reset at current market value, or Chapter 7 and discharge that obligation altogether.

Bankers want you to think it’s morally wrong for a homeowner to default on a mortgage. For commercial mortgages, you never hear the moral argument.

Why should you feel obligated to pay on a now overpriced property when a bank or a business would make a cold, hard financial decision and dump it?

According to the Washington Post, the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group that represents about 2,400 real estate finance companies, sold its D.C. headquarters for $41 million, about half what it paid three years ago.

Don’t fall in love with your house. Morality has nothing to do with your mortgage contract. Do what is in your best interest and the best interest of your family.

Morality is fluid. Don’t believe me? How did good church-going men and women own slaves? Don’t force yourself into economic slavery and pretend you have taken the moral high ground.