Is this part of the new stimulus/bailout plan?

A friend of mine is getting divorced. As a result of the divorce he has two choices. He can either A. Help pay about half of his soon to be ex wife's rent so she stays in the area and he can see his daughter or B. he doesn't and she moves back in with her parents for a while about 300 miles away and he won't get to see his daughter that much. He could C. move the 300 miles with her, but he is in a good established job here so financially it doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, there are legal options that could force her to stay since he will be getting 50% custody, but those would do nothing more than cause more headache/heartache and make more money for lawyers.

So because of this there is no way for him to keep his house. The problem is that he can't sell it because it is now worth about 50K less than when he purchased it 5 years ago. So he calls the bank and explains the situation to them. Maybe they can work with him to rework the mortgage or come up with some kind of plan to ward off him missing payments and causing issues. The bank told him to stop making payments, get into default and they would then let him short sell it, but until he was in default there was nothing they could do for him.

It struck me as odd that they would tell him there is nothing they can or will do until he is behind and in trouble. I guess so much for trying to fix a problem before the problem gets worse.