Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Missouri

Foreclosure- We have been "trying" to work with a large lender since December 08'. My husband lost his job as a D.O.D. contractor overseas in November of 08'. He looked for a job for several weeks with no luck. Which prompted a call to the lender to ask if they had a forbearance and explained the issue at hand. We (at this time) was current but we would only be able to make a couple more payments if he did not find a job. We was informed to call back after we are 30 days past due for they can not help us until we are past due. During that phone call they insisted they can not do anything until we are 90 past due. After 90 days being past due we called and as about the forbearance and they told us they do not offer one and they can not talk to us because we are 90 days past due. We then tried to do a loan modification but they kept loosing our paperwork that we had been faxing over. which we have the transmittals showing they recieved and made follow up phone calls to insure they go it but when it came down to it they would say we never recieved it, so i had to certify mail it to them to make sure they in fact got it. We would do follow up call after call and was told that it could take up to 120 to get an answer due to the large volume of loan modifications. The follow up phone calls was still made with no news. At one of the phone calls i was told we was in an agreement that we agreed with and we were behind again. We never agreed to anything for we was never offered or told of anything to agree to. We was then put in for another loan modification and everything was put on hold once again. Phone call after phone call to check the status with no news. Then we get a foreclosure letter in the mail which we call and they said it was taken care of because were awaiting the loan modification and it wasnt suppose to be sent to us. This prompted more frequent check up calls on our part. They kept making excuses and would not explain anything to us. Finally in January of 2010 we was asked to make 4consecutive payments that they just wanted to show that we could make the payments. we were to call them after the 4th payment, which i did and at that point i was told that we had a balloon balance due at that time and it had to be paid in full or it would got to forclosure. We dicussed the loan modification and we enetered that process all over. June 4, 2010 i placed a call to check the status and was informed that was did not qualify for one and with so much time passing we needed to redo the paperwork to do another loan modification. The packet was recieved by us on June 15 and was faxed on the morning of the 17th. On the 18th i called to make sure the recieved all the information and they said it could take up to 72 hrs to get into the system. I returned the phone call on or about June 21 and was told that they did in fact recieve everything and they had all the paperwork and it was in the last stages of the modification. She also stated that a loan mediator would be calling us by the middle of the following week and if we have not heard from them for us to call back. On June 30 we still have not heard anything so i called to check and was informed that our home was actually sold that morning at 9am and if i disagreed the only thing i could do was to write a letter to the correspondence department and they would investigate it. This finally led daily phone calls to check the status. It was 3-4 months later i was told we was denied because they did not have all our information to do the modification. During this whole period of time my husband did find employment as a D.O.D. employee and we tried to make payments during this time period of trying to get the modification worked out but they would not take any money other then the full balance or what was told above. We was also told that during the period on waiting to hear something from the correspondence dept we did not have to leave the home. We received a unlawful detainer that cost us a couple of thousands of dollars to get it taken care of and they never showed up to court and dismissed it later after the court hearing. We had a week to move out this includes finding a place to live, kids that had surgery, a new baby, getting everything moved, turned on, and cleaned. With my husband working a full time job and did not have time to take off. This caused my husband and i to seperate, a lot undue stress, emotional break downs, embaresment, and tension. During the last phone call before we were told we was denied from the correspondence dept. i was told by a worker and his manager that it only takes 2-4 wks to get a answer back and the notes did not make sense. He did not see why it took so long and the records showed the request having to go to different departments and he said that they stay in one dept. They both apologized and said you were railroaded and now all you can do is wait. Im not sure if we even have a case or whom would be the best attorney to get for this. We are trying to find an attorney that would do it on contingency. Any help would be apreciated.


Asked on 2/16/11, 4:17 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys

Anthony Smith LawSmith

Based upon your description, I am assuming that you are talking about Bank of America. If you search on teh internet, there are several class action lawsuits starting over the repeated loss of modification paperwork. There are thousands of homeowners in your predicament. They wre about to get fiend hundreds of millions of dollars, and stopped all thier foreclosures for a while. Because they took federal bail out money, they were supposed to monitor their modification activity better. You might also contact the Department of Commerce, Health and Human Services (HUD) through their web sites. Both may be taking complaints from agreived consumers.

Good luck

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Answered on 2/17/11, 8:39 am


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