Mortgage Companies and Taxes

Mortgages ugh. I wish we all had unlimited funds to buy and sell what we need in the housing world but that just isn't realistic. So we rely on Mortgage Companies to help fulfill our wish of home ownership. We purchased our forever (fingers crossed) home about 8 years ago. We had a good down payment and some gifts from family but we still needed to secure a mortgage for a close to $200,000. My husband busted his ass to get our house paid off in 7 years (almost exactly), double, triple payments a month. He rocked it and I am so very proud of him. Now we own the house outright and have zero dealings with the mortgage company anymore. Or so we thought. Fast forward 11 months to our Sunday afternoon return home from a family vacation. Going through the mail we find a letter from our township saying our 2016 taxes weren't paid. Um what? Our taxes were taken out of our mortgage escrow account right? Wrong..... It seems that our Mortgage Company (as well as others) hold the taxes basically the whole year paying them at the very last possible moment. Since we paid off our mortgage in August it was just the "right" time of year that the Mortgage Company could collect our interest all year long and then just not pay the taxes. Now you may be wondering where that money went. Well we did get the money back last year after payoff. It was only marked Escrow, no explanation, no tax bill, nothing but "escrow" in notes. We assumed (yes yes Ass U Me) that it was over payment for early payoff and went about our business. Sigh. Now we owe about $10,000 in taxes instead of $5,000. So heads up everyone. If you didn't know before you know now, and if you knew already great for you, wish we did. Happy house hunting and payments y'all!!