Our nightmare began 9/27/00 when our mortgage was sold to the mortgage company from hell, ABN Amro. Actually the 1st couple of months went pretty smoothly but Dec. 7, my dad was hospitalized with only a short time to live. Due to my mothers fragile state, I took FMLA from work. Dad passed away Dec 26th so I was off (without pay) for most of the month. ABN was very understanding and all we had to do was make up missed payments by paying a payment and 1/2, (we missed Dec. & Jan.).
We got our 1st threat of foreclosure Feb 14th they wanted $2200.00 by Mar 18th. We managed to pay them $1123.00 on Feb. 27th and it showed on our statement, after this payment, that we had a past due amt of $1481.30. Phone call after phone call could not get this resolved. Feb 28th I was laid off from my job but good ol' ABN still wanted to work with us so we stuggled but we made our payments as scheduled.
I worked temporary jobs until May. The past due amt continued to grow but we couldn't get anyone to tell us why.in Jan of we got a letter saying we were in arrears again $1608.00 this time. We called and made a phone pymt that day and then we went to see an attorney. We would have done this sooner but unfortunately we were lax in keeping records of all of our pymts. (Hind sight!) The attorney worked out a Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan.
We sent our house pymts for Feb & Mar on time. Our bankruptcy was filed Mar 18th. Within a week ABN sent our checks for Feb & Mar back to us along with a foreclosure notice. They had held the Feb check for over a month and the Mar check til after it was past the 15th (one more late charge for good measure) It seems as though they set about to take our home as soon as they got the notice we were filing bankruptcy even though we were not filing on them. Our attorney said we would just file these 2 payment in the repayment plan and to not pay April either because the plan would not be confirmed until May and that would give us a break.
So 3 pymts were put into the plan plus late charges totalled $2644.00. (Keeping in mind the $1481.00 is still floating there from 2001), in May of yet another threat of foreclosure if we didn't pay $3057.89. This time we had all cancelled checks & bank statements but even bankruptcy attorney couldn't convince them that we didn't owe this money, so once again we paid.
We had to take out a loan to do it and when we sent it, our mortgage statement showed a past due amt of $4774.80. Obviously we can't win. This foreclosure notice came with a letter from ABN's attorney (one of them) stating that this amount would make us current through the end of May.
Now, here we are in 2006. April the 11th, we got a letter from ABN saying that we owed $4836.24 due in full by May 11. Our attorney filed an objection and on June 12, we got another letter from ABN saying they were forwarding our account to their attorney to begin foreclosure. We continued to make our regular pymts while our attorney bickered with them trying to get this past due amount taken care of. (The final pymt through the bankruptcy was paid 9/14/04). Nothing was settled.
July 19, we received our checks for June & July back from ABN. Once again, June check was held for over a month and July was held til after the 15th, so yet another undue late charge. Sept 12, we got a letter from our attorney saying they now are demanding $3429.13. We're thinking that they finally figured out that we didn't owe the $1481.00 from 2001 since the attorneys figure was different from ABN's and that they will eventually figure out that the rest of it is the bankruptcy amt plus undue late charges. WRONG!!!
On Oct 24 we received notice from yet another one on ABN's attorneys that the only way to save our home is to pay $7,738.14. At this point, our own attorney threw up his hands and said we better pay them because his fee is getting awful high and he is afraid we won't be able to pay him if we have to pay this outrageous amount so he told them we agreed to pay, which we didn't. WE DON'T OWE IT! Why should we pay it???!! Even though they believed we agreed to pay it, on Nov 16, we got yet another foreclosure notice.
I must apologize for the length of this and it probably bored the socks off of all who read it, but somehow I feel better. The scary thing is, I didn't even mention them losing our entire file for a month (they blamed that on DHL, a carrier they hired to transfer files to another location). I didn't mention the check they lost and tried to cash 3 months later after we put a stop payment on it and issued another or that they waited a month to admit they lost it only after we sent proof that they signed for it.
I don't know how this will turn out, but we are definitely in the clutches of a corporate monster that has the ability to crush all of our hopes and dreams. Thanks for listening and please pray for us.
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