Consumer complaint received 2015-03-30
Product: Mortgage — Home equity loan or line of credit
Issue: Loan servicing, payments, escrow account — 
Company: JPMORGAN CHASE & CO. (NY)

In 1996 I bought a house for myself and XXXX children. I was a single mother and was living on XXXX for XXXX XXXX. Me and my children recently came out of a XXXX. Finding this house and being able to buy it on land contract was nothing short of a miracle. I paid for the house in three years. The house was only 15,000 dollars which meant a lot of work needed done. I had yard sales and bought pipes and what I needed to fix the big issues. My youngest child was XXXX years old and very delayed in speaking, walking, talking. Lead testing in children became mandatory. I took my son for his lead screening and found out he had XXXX. Environmentalist came to my house and determined the lead came from our home. Lead abatement needed to happen immediately. I called everywhere trying to get help. My yard sales were not gon na fix this. I needed 12,000 dollars right away to abate lead or we had to leave the house. All I could think of is my XXXX kids and me living in that car again. There were no programs for lead abatement. I found a mortgage company XXXX XXXX who offered to help. I told them I needed 12,000 dollars to abate my house of lead. XXXX months latter which seemed like forever they were ready to sign papers. By this time I had exhausted every possible way to stall the environmentalist from making us leave our home. I enrolled my son in a XXXX and took XXXX at home so he did n't get XXXX. I ripped out as much of the lead as I could without money. I arrived to sign closing papers. XXXX told me they had to lend me 19,000 dollars to pay off bills. When XXXX was finished deducting what the loan cost me I recieved a check for 6,000 dollars. Was n't even close to what I needed for the lead. I signed the papers desperate to get things back to normal. The money did n't last long. Everything I removed from house had to be put back up to code. I had to remove a whole section on back of my house. Everything I did cost money taking lead out, hauling it away and putting the structure back. XXXX XXXX raised my payments with escrow from XXXX to XXXX. XXXX XXXX did n't charge enough during closing for taxes and insurance. I was trying to abate lead with my XXXX money and pay mortgage. Both were vital in having a place to live. My son was getting better. He XXXX which made his XXXX. Trying to keep it together I tried keeping up with mortgage payments and lead abatement while caring for my XXXX healthy children and my son who needed more of me than anyone. I missed mortgage payments and would abate lead. Then XXXX even XXXX payments giving the mortgage company all I had taking money from the abatement to pay mortgage. XXXX started charging me fees of all kinds and for all reasons causing the mortgage payments to go up. Payments went from XXXX to XXXX to XXXX to XXXX. Principal staying at XXXX. I could n't keep up. I fought with XXXX about all the fees and got no where. My mortgage was sold to emc mortgage and things got worse. Still sending payments as much as I could but the escrow kept getting larger and larger. Emc ignored me and any letters I wrote. I hired an attorney to help me for very little money. Emc would ignore him too for months. Finally my lawyer had enough, telling me I ca n't afford to fight them they had lawyers on staff. I had no knowledge of mortgage anything. I did n't even know what a interest rate was until my attorney was in disbelief my rate was XXXX. Somthing percentI remarried and was raising my husbands XXXX kids with my XXXX. My husband worked in the XXXX and was gone a lot leaving me to deal with the mortgage company. My youngest was still struggling in school and the Dr diagnosed my son with XXXX