Falcao crafted a humorous letter in response. As to the issue of children, after noting that she and her husband were 49, she said: "Thanks for asking, but if I turn up pregnant, after I call my dead parents and the Easter Bunny, you, Wells Fargo, will be next on my list to notify about the miracle baby."
The consensus of the experts I spoke with was that this letter requirement was neither appropriate nor legal, and could be in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
My experts maintained, however, that the request for this silliness likely did not come from the lender's upper echelons but was a lower-level effort to cover all bases.
Almost every week, as regular readers know, this column offers insights from consumers into what can best be described as the confused state of our financial system.
In just four years, we've gone from giving unqualified borrowers money they could never begin to pay back to buy houses they should never have been allowed to purchase, to a system that forces people who can afford to borrow to walk barefoot on hot coals before their loan applications are processed and then denied.
Falcao's case was just another example. But, I learned recently, this sort of thing has become widespread.
In mid-July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development launched multiple investigations into the practices of some lenders to determine if they illegally denied mortgages because a woman was pregnant or a family member was experiencing a short-term disability.
Denying loans for those reasons could violate the Fair Housing Act. HUD enforces the act, which prohibits discrimination in lending based on sex, family status (pregnancy or children in the family), or disability.
