BofA Demands Death Certificate As Condition For Loan Modification; Financially Strapped Homeowner Refuses To Comply, Exclaims "I Am Not Deceased!"

The Wall Street Journal reports:

• Sarah Larson had been trying for months to get a break on her mortgage payments when a letter from her bank arrived in March. Sitting at the dining-room table of her Minneapolis house, the 33-year-old acupuncturist ripped open the envelope and pulled out a list of important documents demanded by Bank of America Corp. Bank statements. A utility bill. Her death certificate.

• Ms. Larson, who was struggling to make her $1,055-a-month mortgage after client appointments dropped off by half, is in good health. So she replied to the nation's largest bank in assets with a letter. "I am not sending a death certificate because I am not deceased," she wrote. "I am currently still living."

• Turns out the bank had erroneously asked for proof of her demise—the sort of paperwork snafu that has roiled applicants since the Obama administration's foreclosure-prevention plan was announced in February 2009. [...] Across the nation, applicants are flush with tales of the absurd. Lenders and mortgage-payment processors—sometimes in error—ask borrowers to demonstrate the impossible. Or they ask them to verify events of many decades past.

For more, Grave Errors as Undead Rework Loans.