BofA: We Own Your Home, With or Without a Foreclosure

Scary thought: even though you own your home free and clear, a bank can still lock you out of it -- without even giving you notice!

That's what happened to Alan Schroit last October. The retired cancer researcher and his wife arrived at their at their beach home in the picturesque bay community of Galveston on the Texas Gulf coast for a weekend get-away. But when they went to unlock the door, the key would not work. It was then they noticed a sign saying the home they were trying to get into -- um, their home -- had been seized by Bank of America for possible foreclosure.

Never mind that the Schroits didn't even have a mortgage with Bank of America. In fact, according to their Galveston County court petition, they own the home free and clear and had never received any notice of a foreclosure action.

The couple, it seems, were among the unfortunate and growing number of Americans whose homes are wrongly possessed, padlocked and even auctioned off by overeager -- and quite mistaken -- lenders.