A practical and common sense measure such as a monthly statement can assist borrowers and lenders in detecting errors or fraud before it becomes a catastrophic problem. The longer problems go undetected, the longer it takes to untangle the mess when they're discovered. Many borrowers have indicated that had they known there was a problem brewing, they could have rectified it and wouldn't have lost their home.

You may find these scenarios difficult to believe, just as I did, until making additional principal payments on my own mortgage, without having access to a monthly statement, became the forward motion that caused my first Domino to take a tumble. Mine was a game of epic proportions that involved two lawsuits dealing with corporate indifference, negligence, mismanaged payments, erroneous late fees, unlawful demands for payment and false credit reporting. These chain of events consumed my life for more than a decade, and amazingly, it could have been entirely avoided had I received a monthly statement.

Homes are usually our biggest asset, and carry with it our largest debt. We often carry that debt for 15 to 30 years. Without a check and balance system, how do we know if payments are in fact being applied accurately? The truth is - we don't.

Borrower complaints continue to prove that being kept in the dark only serves to exacerbate mortgage servicing errors, negligence and fraud. If your mortgage ends up in the hands of an unscrupulous mortgage servicing company, wouldn't you want a tool designed to verify and track your payments? Sounds simple enough, but needless to say, I think it will (literally) take an Act of Congress for us to get them.

I can't help but contemplate how many foreclosures might have been averted if only borrowers had access to their payment history in the form of a simply monthly statement alerting them to potential problems before they grew out of control. Emmy Award winning Director, Danny Schechter who recently released the film In Debt We Trust, America Before the Bubble Bursts put it best when he plainly stated, "... Practical efforts are needed to empower the public with information necessary to avoid the traps of debt."

What could be more practical than supplying a borrower with a monthly breakdown that illustrates how and if payments are applied? Information is not only practical -Information is power. Without empowering borrowers with payment history information, fraud not only goes undetected, but undeterred.

Will monthly statements stop fraud or fix the foreclosure crises?

Not the least bit! But it will provide us with the power we need to be warned of any problems brewing -before it's too late to do anything about it.

Fraud running deep within the mortgage servicing industry is something victims have been trying to expose for years. If mainstream media and the government would aggressively investigate homeowner claims, they would then begin uncovering the real truth behind this growing foreclosure crisis.

For more information on mortgage servicing fraud, visit msfraud.org and their active forum read the many articles compiled there from various sources. If you believe monthly statements would help deter fraud and minimize costly and compounded errors that end up harming our economy and destroying innocent homeowners, write your congressional representatives, read the comments on the petition board and sign it.

By Denise Richardson

Note: When posting a comment, please sign-in first if you want a response. If you are not registered, click here. Registration is easy and free.