How could someone not know that there will be taxes and insurance? When we got our mortgage, it was thoroughly discussed with us what the taxes would be, and that we needed insurance. I shopped for insurance and notified the lender before closing of what company we had selected. We were given the option of having the taxes and insurance amounts included in the mortgage amount, placed in escrow and paid by the mortgage company or paying them ourselves. How could you not know?
You can't not know! There is disclosure after disclosure given to people during loan application, loan processing and through the closing. The disclosures duing app and processing are based on estimates and one's at closing are based on actual figures!
Obviously, these people decided to not have an escrow account for taxes and insurance where they could handle it themselves. Too bad they neglected to perform as they agreed to do at closing.