What will happen if the bank that my home mortgage is financed through is not y2k compliant? I know for a fact that they are only about 10% of the way into their y2k compliance. What do I do? My home is out in the country about 35 miles outside of Atlanta. Am I in what you would consider a safe location??? Thank you very much.

-- David (dmiles@kslaw.com), October 19, 1998

Answers

You've actually got two questions: one, what happens if/when my bank turns out to be non-compliant, and two, are you safe in your current location.

There's a posting elsewhere about mortgages which points out the fact that an actual, genuine, human being looks at the paperwork before foreclosure starts. As stated elsewhere, document, document, document....get receipts for everything, including mortgage payments.

Bank and mortgage company personnel are likely to do a double-take if they see anomalies in the paperwork, like a glowing payment record (which of course you have) and a sudden apparent reversal of fortune, or strange dates and times in the figures.

As an example of the value of you being alert to what 'normal' is on the paperwork, our house loan paperwork had to be redone (fortunately, while we waited) because mortgage insurance was left off of the first x number of years' payments. Because my husband and I had had to take a first-time homeowner's course, I noticed the problem; turned out that all the paperwork done that day by that company was wrong due to a computer glitch, only discovered when we pointed it out on our paperwork very late in the day.

As for how secure you are, check the postings for urbanites who find themselves constrained to stay where they are. I'm in the same spot, and have ordered a copy of the 'survival retreat' book from Amazon.com to see what might be good to do.

-- Karen Cook (browsercat@hotmail.com), October 19, 1998.