This happened to me in 2003. I hadn’t paid it off, but they sent me all of the paperwork saying that I had. I was honest, and notified them of the error. They were giant pricks about it and made a bunch of demands while I was on vacation.
I’ve always wondered, especially in hindsight considering how messed up mortgages have been. What would have happened if I silently accepted it?
When they discovered their error, you would have gotten a huge fucking invoice.
IANAL, but I’ve read about people that deposited (or cashed) checks made out to them in error, and wound up in serious trouble with the law. I have a feeling this might be in the same category.
I wonder if you could’ve managed to get them to sign a quitclaim deed “just to be sure.” 
How, exactly, were they giant pricks about you allowing them to continue collecting money from you? And what kind of demands? I am truly curious.
Yeah, Me too. Tell us!
PLEASE, pretty please with sugar on it!! I will buy!
It doesn’t take much imagination to envision a bureaucracy which would rather be right than rich. Hell, no imagination at all: just watch any episode of Futurama featuring Hermes Conrad, and the Central Bureaucracy he works for.
Revealing quote: “Bureaucrat Conrad, you are technically correct – the best kind of correct.”
What is mere money compared to being technically correct? Objective reality be damned!
Yeah, but I don’t wanna imagine what happened, I want to know what the actual boneheaded argument was and why. (Also, I think the quitclaim deed idea would have been awesome).
Did you check to see if they recorded the loan satisfaction with the county? Could they do anything about it if they had requested their claim be removed from your deed?
Most likely scenario is a while later they would discover their error and claim you were in default. You would either have to come up with all the money or they would start foreclosure proceedings. This would happen even if you continued to pay your monthly payments which would be lost because the loan was marked as paid.
This is a situation where you really should get some professional advice. Find a lawyer who specializes in real estate law and have him prepare whatever documentation you need to establish that you’ve notified the bank of their error and they are insisting it’s okay. Because the worst case is five years from now, they figure out they were wrong but you’ll be the one who loses your house for not keeping up on the payments.
Of course, the downside of this is that if you push it to that level, the bank may decide to actually review the situation and figure out you’re right. You’ll have the technical satisfaction of being right but you’ll have to resume the payments.
Just previous to the mailing, I had applied for, and received, an abatement for the value of my house from the county. So boom, lower taxes, lower PITI, right? wrong. They suddenly started charging me $120 more a month. I was like, WTF? So I called, and called, and called, and got nowhere. Finally, I tried to get ahold of whatever government entity could help me and get the obvious mistake resolved.
I invite you to try to find who can help you in that situation, because I worked at it for months, and some douchebag in Kansas City, working for the federal government, agreed with the quasi-math of the mortgage co and told me I had to pay. I think the complaining I did is actually what caused the bad paperwork and the bureaucratic bumbling.
So with this in mind, when I called and said they screwed up, I spoke to a customer service drone. I basically said that I wouldn’t return the paperwork until they agreed with my math. Then went on vacation. Cell phone calls, which I hadn’t approved, threats of imprisonment, threats that they would increase my payments unless the paperwork wasn’t returned overnight (This was while I was hundreds of miles away from said paperwork), threats that I would lose my house. Getting home, I just sent them the paperwork back (Overnight, at my expense).
An epilogue to this, was that when my mortgage was sold to another company, within two months they sent me a check for a few thousand dollars for the overage I had been paying.
So yeah, in hind sight? Pricks.
This has happened to me several times. My mortgage was shuffled through the halls of several different companies, and each one had their own level of bureaucracy. Some were worse than others. The last one I ended up with was absolutely insufferable. Fortunately, I have sent them their last dollar and am happily awaiting notice that they’ve filed with the county.
Slip-ups like that always, always come back to haunt you so long as the error is in your favor. If the mortgage holder screws up in their favor, you may or may not get your money back. But if the goof goes in your favor, eventually a random bean-counter will stumble upon it, and they will come for their money; and they won’t be very polite about it either.
The boneheaded argument is “We’re right because we’re right. We’re right because the paperwork says so. We’re right because the computer is never wrong.”
And that’s a valid argument as far as they’re concerned. That kind of bureaucratic stubbornness is completely immune to facts. There’s no argument at all. The analogy of arguing with a brick wall is completely apt.
Yeah, that may have been awesome… but the low-level drone involved probably wouldn’t have been in the “acknowledging the quitclaim deed” department, so nothing would have happened. Bureaucracies are so compartmentalized that if the different parts of the workflow get out of sync, getting them back into sync takes a dramatic end-to-end event (like the mortgage being sold to another holder and integrated into THEIR workflow system).
Aren’t quit claims administered by courts? Or you could file a declaratory judgment action. That would force their lawyers to show up and say something.
One possibility to consider seems like a cliche but it can actually work: write your congressman. Most members of congress have staff members whose job it is to listen to people back in the district who are having a problem with the government.
Be sure to explain your problem clearly and give them all the facts they need. They’re not going to launch an investigation for you. But if you can outline all the details of what you’ve done in trying to solve your problem on your own without satisfaction, they may be willing to step in and give things a push.
And while some federal bureaucrat may be willing to shrug off anything you have to say, rest assured they will pay careful attention to any questions coming from a congressman’s office.
Just remember that if this solves your problem, you’re pretty much obligated to vote for him or her next time.
Little Nemo, just to satisfy my idle curiosity, could you please explain why you are giving NurseCarmen advice about actions he should take NOW to solve a problem that was resolved years ago?
Actually, I think it’s good info. I wish I would have tried it years ago. Maybe somebody stumbles across this thread in the future and is given some good info.
There really was no resources for me to turn to then, and most calls I made to various government entities didn’t know where I was supposed to turn to.
I’m still pretty convinced that the guy I ended up with was an advocate for the mortgage companies, not me.
Probably the part in NurseCarmen’s post where she invites people to try to find who would help in this type of situation?