Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Suit Claims Granite State Couple Had Fully Paid For Policy When BofA Forced Them Into Default By Misapplying Loan Payments To Force Placed Insurance

In Manchester, New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Union Leader reports:
  • Joel and Roberta Bergquist of Rindge allege it was their mortgage servicer’s failure to credit them with buying their own homeowners’ insurance that unleashed a storm that is still unabated.
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  • For nearly two years, the Bergquists say, they’ve been trying to win back control of their lives after Bank of America forced its own property insurance on them, confiscated mortgage payments to cover it, then refused to accept their monthly payments.

    The Bergquists, who are in their 60s, say Bank of America’s actions hurt their quilting business, Quilters Treasure, and ruined their ability to get credit. “They’ve destroyed us both personally as well as financially for our own personal names as well as the business,” Roberta Bergquist said in a telephone interview this month.

    The bank also defamed them, the Bergquists said in a lawsuit originally filed in Cheshire Superior Court.

    Attorney Jason A. Czekalski of Rindge, who represents the Bergquists, said in a telephone interview: “These people did nothing wrong. They were making their payments, they were paying their insurance, they had proof of insurance.”

    The bank, based in North Carolina, had the case moved to U.S. District Court in Concord on July 27. Judge Steven J. McAuliffe on Aug. 13 gave the bank until Oct. 1 to file an answer to the complaint.

    The Bergquists are seeking up to $635,000 from the bank, which includes a payoff of their mortgages, damages and attorneys fees, according to the bank’s attorneys: Jennifer Turco Beaudet and Thomas J. Pappas of Primmer Piper Eggleston & Cramer’s Manchester office. The parties are discussing a possible resolution, according to a court filing submitted by the bank.
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  • According to the Bergquists’ suit, Bank of America’s mortgage servicing unit in March 2011 seized two monthly payments the Bergquists made toward principal and interest on their primary mortgage for 47 Monadnock Road and placed its own homeowners insurance on the property retroactively. That action violated the Bergquists’ mortgage with the bank, the suit asserted.
For more, see Rindge couple face off with BOA over mortgage (Like the wrath of nature which can wreak havoc in the form of hurricane, tornado or flood, the mortgage and foreclosure crisis has his American families in many forms).