Ally Financial, the troubled lender that received a massive federal bailout, has temporarily halted evictions on foreclosed homes in 23 states, a company spokesman said Monday.

The firm, once the financing arm of General Motors, said late Monday that the moratorium was due to "an important but technical defect" in the company's court filings for individual foreclosures.

Ally spokesman James Olecki said that in a number of cases the legal documents from the company's mortgage arm in support of the foreclosure proceedings "may have been executed without direct personal knowledge stated in the affidavit" and were not signed in the presence of a notary public.