During the height of the great recession six or seven years ago, many of my clients with upside down mortgages opted to simply do what I referred to as the unofficial lien strip, whereby they simply did not make the second mortgage payments, with the hope that eventually the house value would come back around to support the encumbrance. The educated assumption at the time, was that while the second mortgage could foreclose, it’s just not their business model to do so. I have seen one or two of these turn into foreclosures, but not very many. There are still options as set forth in this post from California.
In Minnesota, there is actually a statute of limitations where the lien will fall off by operation of the passage of time, which is subsequent to the final maturity date of the original note.