The heros of our military are present in our lives every day here in Severn. With Fort Meade in our backyard, if we don’t have families and friends that serve, we mingle with service members at the local gas stations and grocery stores.

In the past five years I’ve seen homeowners go through terrible situations with their lien holders. These banks did not have the processes in place to handle the flood of foreclosures and short sales that were hitting the market. To be honest, the short sale side is still very chaotic but a little more manageable.

The consequence for their lack of organization, to say the least, was a jumble of mistakes.

Last week, one of those unfortunate mistakes is costing Bank of America and Morgan Stanley $22 million in settlements. Between 2006 and 2010, approximately 180 service members were wrongfully foreclosed on while they were away serving our country.

Unbelievable.

Two reasons this shouldn’t have happened

The first reason is there is an act to protect the civil rights of servicemembers while they are overseas. It is called the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA). The second reason is that the banks have rules to follow as to how they foreclose. All their guidelines are based on timeframes.

Pardon the real world terms, but here is a basic outline of their foreclosure process.

They must send a "you're late on your payment, we can help!" letter, typically more than once. Then they send a "call so we can help or you will be foreclosed on" letter, also more than once. Then, when they are ready to actually foreclose, they have to file a court order (this is the part these banks skipped) and the homeowner receives an official "intent to foreclose" letter.

Eventually a sheriff shows up and delivers an eviction notice to the homeowner. That gives them the actual date the bank is taking ownership and when they have to move out.

There is not a universal guideline to this process, each bank has their own. You can imagine the chaos this causes. Some banks will start foreclosing after three months of missed mortgage payments and some, after 18 to 24 months.

The banks in this case did not file proper court orders, did not check the status of the military members and did not abide by the SCRA Act.

Now they are repaying the 180 service members $22 Million dollars. They must repair all credit damage they caused and improve their training so this doesn’t happen again.

The next several years will bring a record number of short sales and foreclosures. We can only hope the mortgage industry will follow rules after a lot of bad press and tough fines.

Homeowners shouldn’t be victims to their mistakes. Especially while they are away at work to protect that same asset manager, safe behind a desk, who’s deciding to unfairly foreclose on some one.

Data acquired from The Washington Post and Tampa Florida Bankruptcy Attorneys.