Legal Assistance For Severe Arthritis And Depression Disabled Couple
by Karen
Karen and Jim
I'm a 53-year-old married grandmother who has been out of full time work for the last five years. I was recently approved for another five years of permanent disability due to degenerative joint disease and fibrosis in my knees, clinical depression and anxiety. My husband has been on permanent disability for the last seven years with debilitating disk disorder and rheumatoid arthritis in his back and clinical depression. Prior to our disabilities we were both gainfully employed. My husband lost his 18-year job first and I was primary income earner. We were renting a house at the time but it needed a lot of repairs that the landlady wasn't going to fix, so the house ended up costing us quite a lot in fuel for heating the drafty place. So after we got married, we decided to look for a place to buy. After making sure we were staying well within our budget, we bought a house that was less than half of what the mortgage company preapproved us for. We wanted to be sure that in the event I ever lost my job for any reason, we would still be able to afford our mortgage. I lost my job the following year. We have no credit cards and no car payments as both of our used vehicles were purchased with cash. Both of my children are grown; my husband's oldest is in the Marines and his youngest lives with her mother. One year after we bought our house, I lost my job and several months later I was finally granted disability. During that time, the only income we had besides my husband's SSD was my part-time work I could do from home using my transcription skills. Over the almost seven years since we bought our house, we've struggled with increased medical expenses and the economy shutting down my husband's part-time at-home business and the loss of a couple of clients in my transcription business. We've managed to keep our mortgage paid, BUT… Countrywide Home Loans made some serious errors in their records and had us as behind on our mortgage due to their record-keeping errors. Later, and without our knowledge or consent, and before we could get Countrywide straightened out, Bank of America bought out Countrywide and our mortgage and we have been living a nightmare under them for the last couple of years. In the interim, I attempted to go back to school but in my second semester, and too late into the semester to withdraw, I came down with severe flu, which landed me in the emergency room for several hours to bring down a 103 fever and get rehydrated. I now owe a couple of student loans that our income can't afford to pay back. And since I need to be home to try and do some work to supplement our income, I'm not in the position to be able to return to school so I can have my loans put on deferment. To complicate matters, in December 2010 I qualified to have lap band surgery to assist with my obesity resulting from Hashimoto's Thyroiditis, which was exacerbated when I quit smoking three years earlier. What I wasn't told was that my medical insurance would only pay for the surgery and not for the continued maintenance. In order for the lap band to work, I need to pay $128 for each adjustment. Otherwise the entire surgical procedure, and the resulting $1200 in as yet unpaid hospital expenses, will have been for nothing, because after a year, I've lost only five pounds. I really need this lap band procedure to work in order to take pressure off of my knees and back, which is exacerbating the arthritis and joint degeneration. To even further complicate matters, the transmission in our car went and it's going to cost almost $2,000 to repair. In addition to the SSD that we both received, we have been struggling with our home businesses, which we would like to invest in to make more profitable: www.wedding-favor-bookmarks.com www.memorial-bookmarks.com www.ksmusselman.com www.jimscustomcrafts.com www.jimsbutchersupplies.com If we can invest enough to bring these businesses up to a combined $2400/month minimum, which is allowable while on SSD and Medicare, then after getting our house refinanced, we would really be in good shape financially. We just need a little free or very low-cost help to get there. In any case, to help us get out of debt and back on our feet, we attempted to do what most homeowners do, take some equity out of our house and do a loan modification to lower our mortgage. This would have given us the money we needed to pay up our bills, get the car fixed, pay for me to get my lap band adjusted and invest a little bit into getting our home businesses off the ground. But thanks to Countrywide and Bank of America, this is not happening. We've had our house and have been making steady payments on it for almost seven years (since 2005) and have never refinanced, not once. We bought our property with instant equity and now have nearly $50,000 in equity that we simply cannot touch. It's very frustrating and stressful. We have tried everything. First we tried to refinance, but since Bank of America bought Countrywide's erroneous records and then made further errors in distributing our mortgage payments, Bank of America is now showing us at three months behind. In fact, they tried to foreclose on us a couple of years ago and we ended up taking some of the money for bills and paying an extra mortgage payment to them to keep from foreclosing. Then we tried to do the loan modification a year ago. But, like so many other customers of Bank of America, they toyed with our paperwork and even tried to foreclose on us again. Needless to say, the one main source of funding we have that would really help get us out of this mess -- the equity in our house -- is being "held hostage" by Bank of America. And the only way we can see of getting any assistance is by hiring an attorney. I've found out that the right legal assistance can help us fight Bank of America to get our records straightened out and refinance, or to find another financial institution to refinance our house, but attorneys cost money that we just do not have. We were contacted by a couple of organizations to go through all of our records going back to when we first bought our house, but the fees were substantially more than we can afford. And the more often we apply at different financial institutions for a refinance, the more creditor inquiries are piling up on our credit reports. In effect, we are currently at a standstill as far as getting any equity out of our house to help with our financial crisis. We've always done everything we could to keep costs down. We also raise our own chickens and turkeys to cut down on the grocery bill. Since Jim is a hunter, between venison, turkey and chicken that we raise and/or hunt, I can't even remember the last time we spent money on red or white meat the grocery store. We've had suggestions that maybe we should sell our house and rent. That's not a real option because with the real estate market the way it is, we'd never be able to sell for anything close to what it's worth. Plus, the rents today would be more than what our mortgage is right now! Sad, isn't it. Oh, and we can't raise chickens and turkeys in an apartment. LOL The legal assistance we are looking for is for someone to take our case preferably on a pro bono basis and help us refinance our house, lower our mortgage payment and help get our credit rating back in good standing. And if not pro bono, then on a low-cost contingency basis and we'll pay the fees after receiving our equity funds. Once we're able to access some of the equity and lower our mortgage payment, we'll be able to catch up on our bills and invest some funds into building our businesses to supplement our social security income and build some retirement savings as well. Thank you.
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