Q: I sold my home three years ago, but the mortgage company says that I still owe money on the mortgage. I told them the loan was paid off, but they keep telling me that it wasn’t and they won’t give me any other information. They haven’t done anything about coming after me, but the house is sold. What can I do?

A: When you sold your home three years ago, we imagine you closed on the sale at the offices of a title company, closing agent or attorney or a settlement agent. At that closing, the closing agent was supposed to pay the final amount owed on your loan. We suspect what happened is that the closing agent didn’t get the right payoff amount for your loan or failed to get the payoff amount to the lender on time.

Here’s what should happen: Your attorney or closing agent will order a demand letter (also called a payoff letter) from your lender. That demand letter will give the bottom-line number that is needed to pay off the loan in full by a certain date.

Every day the payoff is delayed means you’d owe a higher amount to the lender.

The things that could have gone wrong include: the closing agent (1) sent an amount to your lender that was short payoff funds, (2) sent the amount by mail, and the funds got to the lender after the due date in the demand letter, or (3) sent the wrong amount due to a failure to read properly the amounts owed in the demand letter.

In each of the above situations, the amount you owe the lender would be small. If the payoff was short a couple of days interest or short a fee of some sort, the amount you’d owe the lender should be quite small.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Your closing agent had the obligation to make the payment properly and on time. You may need to go back to the closing agent and have him or her figure out what was or wasn’t done to pay off the loan when you sold your home. It could be that the closing agent’s company now has to fix the mistake that the closing agent made.

You have to balance your time and the costs involved. If you can find out the amount owed and the amount is small, like $50, you might just want to pay it and be done with it. Otherwise, you will need to search through your papers and find the closing agent who closed your deal and ask him or her to fix the issue.

We’ve received letters from readers who have had settlement agents deny they had anything to do with some issues. In some cases, they were right, but in others, the closing agent was clearly obligated to do certain things and when he or she didn’t do it right, the settlement agent should fix the problem.

If your lender gave the wrong payoff amount, or the settlement agent paid the right amount and, through no fault at their end, the amount was not sufficient to pay off the loan in full, you would have paid the difference when you closed. It would be up to you to pay that amount to your lender now.

Pull a copy of your credit report to determine whether your mortgage lender is still showing your loan as unpaid and see how much it is showing as a balance.

Doing a little legwork will help you figure out where you stand with your lender before you end up on hold forever with a lender that won’t or can’t give you information or chasing down your closing agent who may or may not be at the same office.

Ilyce Glink is the CEO of Best Money Moves, and Samuel J. Tamkin is a real estate attorney. Contact them through the website ThinkGlink.com.