You can skip a mortgage payment, but only safely if your servicer approves it first. Lenders offer several formal programs — forbearance, payment deferral, and, for FHA loans, a partial claim — that let you pause or reduce payments during a hardship. A handful of loan contracts even include a built-in skip-a-payment feature. What you cannot do is simply stop paying on your own. An unapproved missed payment triggers late fees, credit damage, and eventually foreclosure.
The Approved Ways to Pause Payments
Forbearance
Forbearance is the most common tool. Your servicer agrees to let you stop making payments, or make smaller ones, for a set number of months. You still owe every dollar, and interest keeps accruing at your original rate, but the account is not treated as delinquent during the pause.1Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What Is Mortgage Forbearance?
Forbearance is not forgiveness. When it ends, you and the servicer settle on one of these paths:
- Reinstatement, meaning you pay the full missed amount in a lump sum.
- A repayment plan that spreads the missed amount across your regular payments for several months, temporarily raising each one.
- A loan modification that permanently changes your loan terms, such as Fannie Mae’s Flex Modification.2Fannie Mae. Flex Modification
- A deferral, which pushes the missed amount to the end of the loan.
Federal rules require your servicer to evaluate you for every option you qualify for, not just the easiest one. Once you submit a complete application, the servicer has 30 days to review it and send you a written decision.3eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.41 – Loss Mitigation Procedures
Payment Deferral
A deferral takes the amount you missed and moves it to the very end of your loan. You don’t pay it back monthly. It comes due when you sell the home, refinance, or make your final scheduled payment. Your regular monthly payment stays the same when the pause ends, which makes deferral the smoothest exit for most borrowers.
FHA Partial Claim
If your loan is FHA-insured, the equivalent tool is a partial claim. HUD pays your servicer the amount you owe, and that amount becomes a separate interest-free lien on your property. You make no monthly payments on it, and repayment isn’t required until you sell, refinance, transfer title, or pay off your primary mortgage.4U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHA Loss Mitigation Program The partial claim cannot exceed the equivalent of 12 monthly mortgage payments plus any HUD-approved costs related to the default.5eCFR. 24 CFR 203.414 – Amount of Payment, Partial Claims
VA and USDA Loans
VA-guaranteed loans have their own forbearance, repayment plan, and modification options. VA modifications can permanently change your interest rate, extend your term, or roll missed payments into the balance.6U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. VA Options to Keep Your Home While Navigating Financial Hardships USDA-backed loans allow informal repayment agreements of up to three months for short delinquencies, or a formal special forbearance plan where the total arrearage cannot exceed 12 months of principal, interest, taxes, and insurance.
Contractual Skip-a-Payment Features
Some lenders, most often credit unions and community banks, write a skip-a-payment option directly into the loan contract. These don’t require a hardship. You notify the servicer, usually once a year, and skip that month’s payment. There’s usually a processing fee, and interest keeps accruing on the unchanged principal, so the skip extends your payoff date and raises the total interest you pay. Read the promissory note before using one.
How to Request Payment Relief
Contact your servicer before you miss a payment, not after. Waiting narrows your options and slows the process. Most servicers will ask for:
- A hardship letter explaining what happened, when it started, and how long you expect it to last.
- Recent pay stubs, and often W-2s from the prior two years. Self-employed borrowers should expect to submit tax returns.
- Two to three months of bank statements.
- A monthly household expense breakdown.
For conventional loans backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, the standard intake document is the Mortgage Assistance Application (Form 710), usually available on your servicer’s website. FHA and VA loans may use different forms. Use the exact figures from your pay stubs and bank statements on the form itself. Any mismatch flags the application as incomplete and delays review.
Submit through whatever channel your servicer designates. Under Regulation X, the servicer must acknowledge your application in writing within five business days and tell you whether anything is still missing. Once the file is complete, the 30-day evaluation clock starts.3eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.41 – Loss Mitigation Procedures
What Happens If You Skip Without Approval
Missing a payment without any agreement in place sets off a predictable sequence. Most mortgage contracts impose a late fee once the payment is more than 15 calendar days overdue. On conventional loans the charge is typically around 4 to 5 percent of the overdue amount, though the exact percentage is set in your promissory note and some states cap it lower.
Federal rules then require your servicer to attempt live contact with you no later than the 36th day of delinquency to discuss loss mitigation options. By the 45th day, the servicer must send a written notice explaining what help is available and how to apply.7eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.39 – Early Intervention Requirements for Certain Borrowers
If you remain unpaid and unresponsive, the servicer will send a formal default notice, sometimes called a breach letter. It typically warns that failure to bring the loan current within 30 days will trigger the acceleration clause in your mortgage, which demands the entire remaining balance at once. From there, the timeline to foreclosure depends on your state’s law. Some states require a court proceeding; others allow non-judicial foreclosure that moves faster.
How a Skipped Payment Affects Your Credit
The approved-versus-unapproved distinction matters most here. An approved forbearance should be reported with a forbearance status code, not as a delinquency, and by itself does not directly lower your credit score the way a missed payment does. Deferment marks can still appear on your credit report, and some future lenders may view them cautiously.
Skip without approval and the damage is fast. A payment reported as 30 days late can drop your score significantly and stays on your credit report for seven years. At 90 or 120 days late you are deep into delinquency, and default can make new credit hard to get for years.
One protection worth knowing: if you have sent a qualified written request or notice of error to your servicer disputing a payment issue, the servicer cannot report negative information about that payment to credit bureaus for 60 days while the dispute is being investigated.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 12 USC 2605 – Servicing of Mortgage Loans and Administration of Escrow Accounts
Escrow, Taxes, and Insurance During a Pause
Skipping a mortgage payment also skips the escrow portion that funds your property taxes and homeowner’s insurance. Your servicer will still pay those bills from the escrow account, but the shortage needs to be repaid, usually as a lump sum or spread across the following year’s payments.
The larger risk is insurance. If your homeowner’s policy lapses during forbearance, the servicer can buy force-placed insurance and charge you for it. Force-placed coverage is almost always more expensive than a policy you would buy yourself, and it typically protects only the lender’s interest in the property, not your belongings or liability.9Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. What Can I Do If My Mortgage Lender or Servicer Is Charging Me for Force-Placed Insurance? Keep your insurance current even while you’re in forbearance.
If Your Request Is Denied
If the servicer denies your request or mishandles your application, you can submit a written notice of error. It must include your name, account information, and a description of the error. The servicer has five business days to acknowledge the notice and 30 business days to investigate and respond, extendable by 15 more business days with written notice.10eCFR. 12 CFR 1024.35 – Error Resolution Procedures
If the servicer finds no error, you have the right to free copies of the documents they relied on. The written decision on a loss mitigation application must also tell you whether you have the right to appeal a denied modification and how long you have to file. If that appeal path doesn’t resolve the problem, you can file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or work with a HUD-approved housing counselor.
Free Help and Scam Warnings
HUD certifies a nationwide network of housing counseling agencies that specialize in foreclosure prevention and loss mitigation. Counseling for foreclosure and default issues is always free, and agencies must waive any fee a client cannot afford for other services.11U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. About Housing Counseling Call 800-569-4287 to find one nearby.
Before you pay any private company for mortgage help, know that federal law prohibits a mortgage assistance company from collecting a fee before it has secured a written agreement between you and your servicer.12eCFR. 12 CFR Part 1015 – Mortgage Assistance Relief Services (Regulation O) Anyone telling you to stop contacting your servicer, telling you to stop making payments without full disclosure of the consequences, claiming government affiliation, or guaranteeing a modification is either violating federal rules or running a scam.