A suburban man who was unable to cash checks from his mortgage company due to still sharing an account with his deceased wife turned to NBC 5 Responds when he couldn’t get the checks reissued. NBC Chicago’s PJ Randhawa reports.
Roy Trejo and his wife, Jean, were married for 34 years when she passed away from lung cancer in 2020.
Four years later, the grief is palpable. Trejo said he still has trouble talking about the loss.
As time went by, Trejo said he got some surprising news. An unexpected windfall from Social Security meant he was able to pay off his mortgage. “It did feel really pretty good at the time,” Roy told NBC 5 Responds.
It felt even better when he received two checks from his mortgage company, Shellpoint Mortgage Servicing. Part of it was money left over from his escrow account, adding up to around $6,000.
Trejo said he planned to use the money to complete upgrades at his home. But when he tried to deposit the checks at the bank, things took a turn. He couldn’t cash the checks without his wife’s signature, because the checks were made out to both of them.
“I said well, I can’t do that because she’s no longer with us,” Trejo said. “It never really dawned on me, well, I should take her name off my account or the account there because she's gone and just something I never really thought about.”
When Trejo couldn’t get this problem resolved with his mortgage company on his own, he called NBC 5 Responds for help. He said that got the ball rolling. “Right away, my phone started ringing. I started getting emails and they were wanting to talk to me.”
Local
After months of delay, Trejo's mortgage company finally responded. About a week after NBC 5 Responds got involved, Trejo said he was wired the six thousand dollars the mortgage company owed him.
We asked the mortgage company why it decided to help Trejo after hearing from NBC Chicago, but we didn’t receive a response.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter.
Key Takeaways
There’s no true way to prepare for the death of a spouse or partner, but here are a few things couples can do right now to help minimize the burden if something happens.
- Make a list of all of your joint accounts, with account numbers, bank names, and phone numbers.
- Make sure your will and estate documents are up to date and easy to find.
- Share your login and password information for online accounts, especially for banking and utilities.
