Another Lender Jumps Gun Against Family In Foreclosure; Wife, Kids Discover Home Interior Destroyed While Hubby Is Deployed In Afghanistan

In Tuscola County, Michigan, WJRT-TV Channel 12 reports:

• He's in Afghanistan, serving his country. Back home, his family is in a fight to preserve their home. A Tuscola County family thought they had worked out everything with their lender through a program that helps military families facing foreclosure.

• The family still has the home, or what's left of it. Benjamin Kotzian's wife and kids spent a few months with him in Texas before he was deployed to Afghanistan in June. They arrived back home on Sunday, but it's a far cry from the home sweet home they remember. "It's sad enough to have your husband leave, but then when you just want to come home and you come home to this," said Michelle Kotzian. Kotzian and her children came back home to different locks and broken door frames. "I find my carpets ruined, I find broken pipes, I have no water, I can't turn the water on," she said.

• In December, she contacted the bank which holds the mortgage on the Millington-area home she has owned for five years. Kotzian told the bank her family was going to Texas to see her husband, Benjamin, before he was deployed to Afghanistan. "I'm leaving in January," she said. "I will be back five or six months later. My husband is deploying. We intend on coming back."

• She made the call because the family had just worked out a plan with the lender to avoid foreclosure with the help of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which gives some protection to military families trying to keep their homes. Shortly after she arrived in Texas, she got a call from a neighbor saying people were at her house. "They come into the home, they are taking stuff out of the home," she said.

• Afraid that her home was being foreclosed on, she called the lender. She says the company admitted a mistake was made and the house was not in foreclosure. But when she returned months later, the family's belongings were gone and the house had looked as if it had been ransacked. Water pipes were ruptured, even though the home was winterized.

• "They've already admitted that they made the mistake. I just want them to come and fix it," Kotzian said. "I just want my running water. I want my clean carpet. I want my home. That's what I want. I want my home the way I left it."

• We have made several attempts to get in touch with the bank that holds the Kotzian's mortgage, but we have not heard back from them.

Source: Soldier fights in Afghanistan while family fights to save house.

(1) See Long Island Judge Hammers Wells w/ $155K Tab For Oppressive, Heavy Handed, Egregious Conduct For Pre-Sale Lockout Of Homeowner In Foreclosure for a recent court ruling which found a lender liable for $150,000 in exemplary (punitive) damages (in addition to $5,000+ in actual damages) in a trespassing case involving an improper padlocking by a foreclosing lender. In that case, the lender was found to be a bit premature in entering the premises since the delinquent borrower was still the legal owner of the property.

See Nevada High Court OKs Damage Award To Homeowner Due To Mortgage Company Misidentification Of Home In Foreclosure for a 2008 case in which the Nevada Supreme Court OK'd an award over over $1 million, including $968,000 in punitive damages, for a couple whose home was misidentified by a foreclosing lender and subsequently ransacked (for the actual court ruling, see Countrywide Home Loans v. Thitchener, 192 P.3d 243; 2008 Nev. LEXIS 79; 124 Nev. Adv. Rep. 64 (September 11, 2008)).