My husband and I re-financed our home with Citizens Bank in 2005 so that we could get a lower interest rate. They waited till the last possible moment for closing and changed the interest rate on us to 2% more than what we were paying. They came under a FDIC Cease and Desist order for their illegal practices and we got stuck in the middle. One year after this, they sold our note to GMAC. Unbeknownst to us at the time, they failed to pay our insurance and taxes. We were without homeowners insurance for nine months and our taxes became delinquent. We tried straightening this mess out with GMAC to no avail. Let me say here that we did not buy a McMansion we could not afford. We bought an old farm house that we love. We were never behind in our payments, we were not in loan modification. We requested an escrow analysis from GMAC and they sent us private banking papers for a man in Texas (we live in Tennessee). When we were at the point of re-instating our insurance, GMAC said that our escrow payment would go up to make up for a shortage. How can there be a shortage if we had no insurance? GMAC then sent us a letter that our insurance carrier did not have a sufficient rating (we have Farm Bureau that has the highest rating possible). The whole time all of this dispute was going on, we never missed a payment. Because they were misapplying our payments to a suspense account, GMAC reported to the credit bureaus that we were not making payments. We were eventually foreclosed on, however, we filed a lawsuit to stop the foreclosure. We sued Citizens Bank for breach of contract and GMAC for violating the FCRA and the Privacy Act, fraud, negligence and other things.in the course of a year of motions, hearings and such, Citizens Bank also sent us private banking information on some of their customers! Three months after filing our lawsuit, Citizens Bank still had not answered so we filed a Motion for Default. No one from Citizens Bank or GMAC showed up for the hearing, yet the judge would not grant us the Default because he wanted the jury to decide on the merits of the case. So we go on with interrogatories and more motions. We even had to file a Motion to Compel because neither of the other parties would answer us. About two months before our jury trial, they asked for a Summary Judgement. The judge totally ignored our evidence, did not answer anything brought up in the motions and GRANTED THEM summary Judgement. How can this happen! We are now in the appeal process. We are doing this pro se (representing ourselves). We have done hours and hours of research on the laws and rules of the court as well as the two banks. It is scary to think of going before a panel of appeals judges, but we feel confident that the law is on our side, if we just don't give up.
0 comments