filing a claim on the credit life insurance on his car.

to an art form. The price of admission to see these stellar con artists perform is the money they cheat out of the tens of thousands of ordinary citizens who have to deal with them. When cries of reform are made it only means that they, the corporations, will then have to purchase more of our legislators at both the federal and state level to prevent any meaningful reforms. Almost a foolproof system since individuals have no clout (money) to compete at that level and because the ethics or morality of their actions have no bearing on any legislation that might be considered, nothing will be done.
And the beat goes on!

I imagine that this situation is not rare. Often (but not always) men deal with the finances
and matters like insurance. It makes sense that some wives may not be aware of the finer details of some of their household financial and insurance deals.

I could totally see this happening with my grandparents and parents.

I bet this has happened quite a bit. The bank just doesn't tell the spouse that their mortgage is free and clear, due to the death of their loved one.

I bet some of these crooks rely on that being the case, and the person who purchased the mortgage protection most likely relies on the bank to inform their living spouse about the mortgage being paid off.

What do you want to bet that this is pretty common? It's a total scam.

If women are not expected to be equal partners in their own marriages, why should they be equal in society? They cannot be expected to handly complex things like balancing a checkbook, their husbands always did that for them. You think I'm going to pay a housewife who lets her husband handle the finances as much of a salary as I do the husband? Not on your planet, I'm not.

First off--I was not making social commentary about "women being equal partners" in their marriage or
about equal pay either.

Secondly--Just because, in some marriages, men primarily handle the finances--that does not make an "unequal
marriage." I handle the finances in our marriage. Our marriage surely isn't "unequal." We both have our
strengths and our particular interests and shared responsibilities are divided. I've got plenty of friends in marriages
and their husbands primarily handle the finances. Different scenarios work for different couples.

With all of this said--I think you're missing the point. That these criminal banksters cheated a woman (and the
deceased spouse) out of services/insurance that were paid for.

If you actually believe that denying women equal pay is justified (on your planet)--because their husband primarily handles
the finances--then that is warped. According to your logic, in marriages where women primarily handle the finances--men
should be paid less. That's wacko.

I handle the finances in my marriage, too. I pay all of the bills, and balance the checkbook. That doesn't mean that my wife does not know where the documentation is or how to read them.

I also do the grocery shopping and cooking, but I'm neither barefoot or pregnant.

I do believe in equal pay for women. I also believe that they have to accept equal responsibiliity for their financial well being.

If someone claims that a woman was cheated because she was a woman, then I believe that person is renouncing any claim to equal pay. You cannot have it both ways. If women can perform equally with men, then we must require them to do so. We cannot give women equal compensation and still protect them based on unequal intellectual capability for self protection.

If I die, my wife is supposed to do what? Act like an ifdiot and go to the bank and tell them to manage her finances? Have them tell her what and how much to pay because she doesn't know how to read the papers that are in my desk? I don't think so.

And it doesn't matter what sex the partner is.

Until my husband retired I handled all the financial dealings. While I try to keep him up to date on various accounts and the details for all our business he still does not have the familiarity I do. I am actively trying to educate him on this stuff, but there are a lot of things that have to be covered.

If the couple in the article in the OP got their mortgage decades ago, the husband could have mentioned the insurance, but the wife may not have remembered during the disruption of losing her partner and all the other things she would have had to handle.

After my father died, my mother - who is intelligent and who can handle business affairs - was overwhelmed with the loss of her partner of 67 years as well as having to handle the funeral arrangements, meetings with attorneys and doctors, and just would not have been able to deal with following up with every detail. My sister was there to help and had already begun sorting out my father's affairs during the last six months of his life - but even now, a year and a half after Dad died, we keep finding additional things about his business affairs.

As for the situation in the OP article the bank and the insurance company clearly knew that the policy existed and had a responsibility to let her know. The wife was responsible enough to keep current with the mortgage payments even during the financial disruption of 2008-2009, so she is not ignorant or an idiot.

Yeah, my father died after fifty years of being married to my mother, and so I sat down with her and made sure she was clear on all of the finances. As did your sister for your mother. We did not count on banks and finance companies to do that for them. Your sister and I seem to share a sense of personal responsibility, rather than sitting back and becoming victims and then blaming banks and corporations for it.

Perhaps she did not have a child that could do what my sister did for my Mom and you did for yours. Maybe she was trying to deal with everything on her own. But if there was not an easily understood contract for the insurance it would have been easy to miss in the multitude of details following her husband's death.

The suit claims that the fees listed as part of her mortgage payment were not itemized and even when her attorney tried to find out the details the company collecting the mortgage did not want to disclose exactly what they were:

You bet I'll blame them. The woman in the story posted by the OP *is* a victim. The bank should be blamed.

There seems to be a lot more terse, dry comments on here these days. Masters of drolly ironic epigrams.

Another story of the 1%ers screwing the middle class. And they can get away with it again and again and again, because the penalties and fines are nothing compared to the "profits" they make by cheating the 99%.

class action suit charging Bank of America with ruining our name "America"????

After all, a "bank" that will steal a disabled man's life savings ($25K) will have no scruples in dealing with anyone.

I ran away from them after a thoroughly botched refi attempt.

We have an N word and that is Nationstar. Probably the most incompetent, disorganized mortgage company in existence, born of a backroom deal at B of A...

I did some research on them then called the CEO of our bank. I was told they had a right to sell my loan to any ill gotten thief they wanted to. Yeah, they may have that right but I don't have to go along.

So, I refinanced to a credit union I trusted and saved some interest in the process. I made only 2 payments to those cheats and one was the pay-off of my loan. We had a great credit rating. Why they thought we would put up with Nationstar is beyond my comprehension.

Not only should Laura Coleman Biggs be compensated for all those mortgage and insurance premium payments - 'made whole' in legal parlance, but the punitive damages against B of A should be HUGE. In fact, these punitive damages should be SO EXTENSIVE as to assure that B of A will NEVER practice this particular type of fraud EVER AGAIN.

If I were on the jury, I would advocate punitive damages of at least $50 million, which admittedly is a drop in the bucket in the face of the $4.8 billion net profit B of A had in 2014, but still significant.

Because that is the only purpose of punitive damages - to ensure the guilty party has sufficient incentive NEVER to do that particular thing again.

Good luck, Laura.

Give the victim 5 million.

Lock up everyone involved with the theft 5 years, from the top on down.

Until banksters go to jail, nothing will change.

It's not

I'm more in favor of a $10 billion judgement plus jail time for the banksters of BoA for fraud.

Squeaky clean, in fact.

I like your style.

He can reduce it or Bank of America can bury her in legal limbo for a very very longtime

WHEN are these fuckers going to jail?? If you or I tried to con the widow out of her $$, we would. But because they are shielded (by an army of lawyers hired to do just that) they never see consequences and just keep on going. Likely they will settle out of court, not to protect their reputation, but so the press stops and more people don't look into how they are being defrauded. I'll bet EVERYONE with any dealing with any bank can find several instances of fraud, from tacked on fees to mortgage theft, they build their billions one nickel at a time. Fuck them all.

They can make plenty of profit when they operate honestly. But fraud has become SOP. What happened to this country?

Even if they pay all the claims, they still make a killing because you are basically buying life insurance at an very high rate.

the banks and the government. I laugh at her when she says that kind of stuff.

Occupy Wall Street people as losers? dirty, hippie pot heads?

Hit them where it'll hurt them. And hurt them the most.

The "penalties" are so meager that some of these institutions won't even feel it. They need to FEEL it. Like kerosene-enema feel it. The deterrent needs to be a really serious deterrent. That inflicts mega-pain. And maybe can't be bargained down, either.

Corporate America loves to blacklist "the little people".

We should be able to do the same.

There's a tendency in human nature to want to "get around" whatever the perceived impediment is. Whether it's geographical, legal, road blocks, permission slips, moratoria, etc etc etc. I would venture to say that most of Wall Street is populated by people looking for ways to get around whatever remaining restrictions or regulations there still are, so they can make a few extra bucks. You'd have to watch these weasels closely. They'd move heaven and earth to get around whatever blacklist there might be or bend the rules or sneak underneath or whatever. AGAIN we'd have to outthink and outwit them, and never let up, either. Because THEY never do, either. Not when there's even the slightest chance to make a buck.

screwed to the wall by Bank of America...I hope she wins millions...Of course, B of A will keep the suit in court...hoping she will die before she collects a penny...THE GREEDY BASTARDS at work for the 1%...

Hope those punitive damages are HUGE. TEN figures. Let 'em bargain it down from tens of millions to a few million dollars for that poor woman. There should be BIGTIME penalties for being that mercenary, THAT shitty.

Too big to fail, my ass.

luckily a friend went through the papers after 3 years
and found the mortgage insurance papers.

The bank did pay her back, but naturally without
any interest.

I told her to check she had told the bank and even got her husbands name removed from their morgage. Then with her pushing they found the morgage insurance. She made them pay her back and they did. Same bank.

50 million dollar fine, with a million dollar penalty for every day it goes unpaid.

It's all right when you are right when you prove you are right.

Unless you have destroyed another life to remain alive, you can not understand.

I fall asleep dreaming of ways I could F2$#@$ over Bank of America.

Tonight's fantasies should be especially rich.



Cher

I posted it a few days ago. I think more eyes need to see just how mendacious are most of the cretins who work for banks.

Because she has a brain and knows how to use it. Becuse she believes in equal rights for women and is reasonable enough to know that her belief also requires equal responsibility for women. Because she is not a mindless housekeeper, barefoot, pregannt cook.

This country and, for the most part, people in this forum, declaim the lack of equal pay for women and demand that it be corrected. Women are, it is claimed, in all respects equal to men, and yet we are quick to victimize a woman because "she did not know her husband had secured mortgage insurance," and presumably because, not knowing it, she did not have a mind or the intelligence to find it out. Give me a break.

We have become the perennial victims of big business only in part due to the evils of big business. We have in large part become the victims of our own unwilingness to take responsibility for our own well being, to act responsibly, and to serve as our own advocates.

The criminality of the banking industry runs deep.

Yet people are still lining up to have bank accounts with them. Boggles my mind every day.

This is common practice by corrupt banks.