Loan Servicer Refuses To Accept House Payments From Elderly Widow Because She's Not Named In Deceased Hubby's Mortgage, Leaving Her Facing Foreclosure

In Jacksonville, Florida, The New York Times reports:

• Geraldine Bates lost her husband to kidney failure last year. Now, she has fallen behind on her mortgage payments and is terrified that she will lose her home in Jacksonville, Fla.
  
  Ms. Bates, 70, is caught in a foreclosure trap that is ensnaring widows across America: she cannot get help lowering her payments until her name is added to the mortgage note, but the lender says she must be current on payments before that can happen. “I keep praying,” said Ms. Bates, who is fighting with the bank to stay in the four-bedroom house.
  
  Just as the housing market is recovering, a growing group of homeowners — widows over the age of 50 whose husbands alone were holders of the mortgage — are losing their homes to foreclosure because of a paperwork flaw that keeps them from obtaining loan modifications.
  
  In the latest chapter of the foreclosure crisis, homeowners over 50 are falling into foreclosure at the fastest pace of any age group, according to nationwide data, in part because women are outliving their spouses and are unable to cope with cuts in their pensions, ballooning medical costs — and the fine print on their mortgages.

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• [I]nterviews with elder-care advocates, housing lawyers and borrowers suggest that the problem is spreading fast, propelled by an aging population. Legal aid offices in California, Florida, Ohio and New York say it is among the top complaints from clients. Billy Howard, a consumer lawyer in Tampa, Fla., said he had more than two dozen cases involving widows, up from virtually none before 2007.
  
  “These women are essentially invisible,” said Gladys Gerson, a lawyer for Coast to Coast Legal Aid of South Florida.

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• The trouble for Ms. Bates, of Jacksonville, Fla., began after her husband Robert, a World War II veteran, died last February. Mr. Bates had obtained a trial loan modification but died before he could make the first payment. Determined to make good on the hard-won plan, Ms. Bates said she notified HSBC, the servicer, of her husband’s death and sent in a check for $1,125.47.
  
  Ms. Bates said she was devastated when the check was returned, with a letter explaining the money could not be accepted because she was not on the mortgage.

For more, see Mortgage Catch Pushes Widows Into Foreclosure.