Hustled into a sub-prime mortgage on a house she says she hadn't set out to buy, Lenora Barnes says she sat down last year and signed a rush of closing papers when the lawyer handed her something that didn't fit the moment: divorce papers.

"My husband had filed for divorce prior to closing, but I did not want to sign the papers for two more years," Mrs. Barnes said in a court affidavit.

By the end of May 10 of last year, Mrs. Barnes had signed a divorce settlement and three mortgages -- including one she says she didn't know she was taking out and that the sellers say they didn't know they were offering -- all to get a home she had set out to rent, not buy, and which she complains is ramshackle and rat-infested.

Last week, the two-story house in Sheraden was sold at sheriff's sale, another addition to a legacy of decrepit homes, fishy mortgages and angry clients of James C. Platts and his now-shuttered company, Easy Realty Solutions.

The Barnes affidavit, with its account of high-pressure sales, last-minute price changes and surprise divorce settlement is one of 13 filed as part of a court case seeking to void more than $1.2 million in second mortgages authorities say Mr. Platts created despite the lack of a mortgage broker's license, while selling homes long after state officials had revoked his real estate license for an earlier fraud conviction.

"I got totally ripped off and now I have a foreclosure on my credit history," said Mrs. Barnes.

She is not alone.

This month, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported that home foreclosures had reached an all-time high, driven by homeowners no longer able to pay on high-interest, sub-prime mortgages such as the one Mr. Platts arranged for his clients.

In Mrs. Barnes's case, a $68,000 loan with NovaStar Mortgage Inc. went into arrears within months of her purchase. Neither she nor the sellers, Daniel and Shannon Lebak, were aware of second and third mortgages Mr. Platts worked into the sale, and both buyer and seller now say they feel cheated.

NovaStar is one of dozens of sub-prime lenders now teetering on bankruptcy. Little more than a year ago, the company's stock was trading in excess of $100 a share. This month, it closed at $3.

Both Mrs. Barnes and the Lebaks complained that Bernard J. Flugher, the attorney who oversaw the closing -- a closing at which Mrs. Barnes and the Lebaks say they never saw each other -- didn't fully explain the papers presented to them. Mr. Flugher denies it.

Shannon Lebak, in an affidavit filed in Common Pleas Court, said Mr. Platts had led her to believe they would receive $55,000 for the house but discovered at the closing they would get only $50,000 and would have to pay all of the closing costs, "so we had to take out a personal loan from Mr. Platts in the amount of $2,500."

They were also unaware that Mr. Platts, through Easy Realty, had filed a lien against their home and only learned of it a year later when they were called by the mortgage company's lawyer after Mrs. Barnes defaulted.

"The NovaStar attorney also informed us for the first time that we extended a second mortgage to the buyer, Lenora Barnes, in the amount of $17,000," Mrs. Lebak said.

Mrs. Lebak said Mr. Platts told her he would make no money on the transaction, and that he would have to wait for the buyer, in this case Mrs. Barnes, to refinance her mortgage before he would be paid.

In fact, deed records show that Mr. Platts sold 2912 Glen Mawr for $85,000 -- $17,000 more than the $68,000 Mrs. Barnes said she was told she would be paying.

That was when Easy Realty "extended me a loan in the amount [of] $17,000," Mrs. Barnes said in her affidavit. "I was unaware this loan was a mortgage."

Shannon Lebak said she was unaware that the mortgage had been taken out in her name. Court filings show that the note was then signed over to Easy Realty.

In an interview with the Post-Gazette, Mrs. Barnes said she had not set out to buy a house in the first place. She said she contacted Mr. Platts to arrange one of his company's "rent-to-own" deals.

Six months earlier, Mr. Platts and his company had agreed to a consent order after the state attorney general's office went after them for rent-to-own schemes authorities said defrauded dozens of customers. By early 2006, Mr. Platts had shifted most of his business to home sales.

"I kept saying 'I can't buy a house, my credit's shot, I can't buy a house. And he says, 'You have credit; we'll put you in a higher interest rate,' " Mrs. Barnes said.

Despite an 11.4 percent adjustable rate mortgage with Novastar -- a mortgage that was to balloon to as much as 14 percent after two years -- Mrs. Barnes said she has no recollection of filling out a mortgage application.

"You'd have to ask them," she said.

Midway through the document signings, she said, Mr. Flugher produced the divorce settlement.

"I said, 'What do you mean I have to sign my divorce papers?' " Mrs. Barnes recalled. "I was not going to get a divorce for two more years ... there was no reason for us to rush into a divorce."

Mr. Flugher said Mrs. Barnes had to be divorced in order to obtain her mortgage.

"Pennsylvania law is clear that if she purchased the property while she was married, her husband would have a marital interest in the property and her mortgage would need to include him," Mr. Flugher said in a statement faxed to the Post-Gazette in response to written questions. Mr. Barnes "signed off of the property and waived his rights which was done in the Property Settlement Agreement," Mr. Flugher added.

Pennsylvania law is not as clear on the matter as Mr. Flugher suggests, according to Steven Eisenberg, a suburban Philadelphia real estate attorney who later represented NovaStar when it foreclosed on 2912 Glen Mawr.

"She didn't need to sign a property settlement to put in place a purchase she was making after the divorce filing, when there were no marital assets used," Mr. Eisenberg said. Mrs. Barnes said she put no cash down on the sale.

Mr. Flugher said Mrs. Barnes "was aware of the marital agreement prior to the closing and had negotiated the terms of the Property Settlement Agreement pro se with her husband's attorney, Max C. Feldman. This was done many months prior to the closing and I was supplied the papers to sign at the closing."

Mr. Feldman, who represented Mrs. Barnes's husband, Timothy, said his initial impression was that Mr. Flugher was representing Mrs. Barnes in the divorce and that he received a telephone call at his office the day of the closing informing him that Mrs. Barnes was at a real estate closing and available to sign settlement papers.

"I never had any contact with Lenora Barnes, ever," Mr. Feldman said. "The only communication I had with Lenora Barnes was indirectly with Bernie Flugher."

Mr. Feldman later checked his file on the Barnes divorce and said that Mr. Flugher had written a note when returning the divorce settlement papers to clarify his role.

"Notice: I do not represent Lenora Barnes. I only helped her get her loan for the new property," Mr. Flugher wrote.

With the property now lost, Mrs. Barnes said she is looking for a place to live. At the time she closed on the house, she said, her earnings were roughly $24,000 a year. Since that time, her hours have been cut back and, just months after closing on a property she didn't intend to buy and signing divorce papers she said were foisted on her unexpectedly, she received more bad news.

She has breast cancer.

Between jobs, she stops regularly for radiation treatment at a Pittsburgh hospital. Mornings, she removes dead rats from her basement.

"It's infested with rats," she said. "They're chewing the foundation of the house. My pit bull is killing an average of two rats a day in my house."