Landlord didn’t pay mortgage

UPDATE: they’ve been given an extension to get their things and some money in their pockets and I’ve had to go back home due to a death in the family. Life’s crazy

I live in Virginia.

We have lived in a house since late July and as it turns out, the landlord has not been paying the mortgage since before we moved in. The people living here are all struggling, been laid off and got jobs just to be fired in 2 days with no explanation so it’s been a rough several months for us and so we got behind on rent by a month.

We thought the eviction was our fault, but the eviction was addressed to the homeowner/landlord not us so we were pretty confused especially since we thought my MIL was really in really close contact with the landlord and my MIL called the lady we’ve been paying and she said “Oh it’s probably because of where you’ve been late so we’ve been late and then there’s fees for being late but we’ll get it sorted out!!” And they called back later to say we owed $8000 and she would pay it but she just had a baby and all this other bs.

We figure out the mortgage company itself and call them directly and they say, essentially, “You’ve been scammed, you can pay us what they owe which is $15,000 and then you can take over the loan and stay there or you can leave by the 15th(of January. That means we got roughly a weeks notice to move)

I’m having to send my kids 4 1/2 hours away to live with their dad who’s picking them up tomorrow, we don’t have any money because we’ve poured what we have into the bills and rent so we can’t hop into a hotel and the weather for the foreseeable future is “cold as fuck”. We have nowhere to go!

Is there ANY immediate, legal protections for us? We don’t even get a 30 day notice as the tenants in the home? They claim the sheriff is coming to lock the doors on the 15th and they can’t do anything because “it’s in the courts now”. I’m terrified.