Posted by Susan Haskins on December 17, 1998 at 09:42:18:
In Reply to: Mortgage Company applied payments strange posted by SGH on October 24, 1998 at 08:54:12:
: We filed Chapter 13 in May 1993. We worked out a 60 month repayment plan for our only secured debt which was our mortgage. The mortgage company submitted a claim and accepted the plan. The claim included 7 past due payments. When the mortgage company started receiving the trustee payments they applied them first to all their expenses - lawyers fee, appraisal fees, etc, hence they only started applying the payments to the actual past due payments until the end of the repayment period. During this time they reported our account pastdue over 180 days to every credit bureau. In other word, as I was sending in our regular payments, they were applying them to the oldest past due payment which was a part of the bankruptcy claim. Is this right? Were they applying my payments (both from the trustee's' and my regular payments) correctly? Now our credit reports show that we have been over 180 days late since 1993! even though I made the regular payments on time. FYI - our mortgage company is located in Oklahoma.
This is where we are right now: I have written a letter to
the lender outlining all my payments during the 60 months
of the BK, showing when I was late and when I paid late
payments. By my calculations, I do owe them about $100 dollars
which I stated I would pay with my next regular payment,
once they confirmed that my calculations were correct. I
pointed out their error in applying late charges to pre-petition
payments. I have not heard back from them yet. It has been about
3 weeks since I sent the letter. I am giving them another week.
I never wrote a letter earlier because I called them at the
beginning of the BK to request an up to date payment book and
was told at that time that I must send in the oldest coupon
with each payment which would be for the payments included in
the BK. I stated, then, that I thought this was incorrect but
was told "Even if you are in BK your past due payments are still
due and late."
I was working with a "Financial Counselor" at the time who was
the person who recommended that we file Chapter 13 and quided
us through the process. I called him and related what the bank
had told me and he said to "not worry about it - they will most
likely back out the charges once the BK in over." So that is
basically what I did - waited until the BK was done, but they
have not backed out the charges.
We are currently working with another lender to refinance our
house. My credit reports have been fixed to state that we have
never paid late to the current lender and they are
reporting that our payments are up to date.