Ollie's Thoughts

My parents bought the house I grew up in in 1992, approximately two months before my third birthday. They took out a 30-year mortgage at their bank. I think they took out a second mortgage in 1997 to pay off the first one (there was a "balloon payment" coming up) and pay for repairs being done to our roof. In 2007, my dad took out a third mortgage to pay off a few more debts. He went with Navy Federal Credit Union, where he had an account my mother was not on (they each had an account of their own - Mom's was with Suntrust back then - as well as a joint account at their original bank). Because of that, and because Mom wasn't a veteran, Navy Federal refused to allow her to be on the mortgage as well. This probably isn't thoroughly legal, but it was their policy, so Mom signed the paperwork my dad (who was emotionally abusive and also an alcoholic) forced on her, and he got the mortgage.

In December of 2009, Dad died of what's listed on his death certificate as "coronary insufficiency". My mom was at work, my brother and I were both at university (ironically, it was the last day of the fall term and both of us were getting ready to come home for winter break - great timing as always, Dad), and my mom's brother, who lived with us, was asleep upstairs, and since he's deaf as a post and harder to wake than a bear in winter, he didn't hear a thing. What we've guessed happened, based on the aftermath and what we know of him, is that he was trying to get out to the detached garage, where he was storing his tequila because "[Mom] didn't like to see him drink" (that's a direct quote from him - she couldn't make him understand that what she didn't like was him being drunk, not watching him drink tequila by the half-pint), and the back door stuck. In a rage, he threw something through the back window and probably slammed his hand and/or head into the glass, which would have made him angrier. He was already angry because he'd (most likely) tried to kill himself the night before, and my mom was supposed to have been all concerned and taken him to the hospital, but she didn't "play the game" right and just went to work and left him to sleep off his obvious hangover. He stomped through the kitchen and living room, taking the time to smash as many of my mother's dishes as he could and more or less destroy the armchair she'd bought for herself, and then collapsed in front of the front door and died.

The member of our household most upset about this turn of events was our rescue beagle, Artemus.

Anyway, Mom did what you're supposed to do, probated his will (obviously he left everything to her), sent his death certificate to all the creditors, whatever. Most of them willingly switched everything over to her name. One of the utility companies (I think it's the electric company) basically told her that to switch it into her name she'd have to pay a fee for setting up a new account, which she thinks is ridiculous and also didn't really have the money for then, but she didn't worry too much about that. The house went 100% into her name. He'd been telling her for years that he had a $400k life insurance policy through the Navy, which was true, but what he didn't tell her (or possibly didn't know, or possibly didn't care about) was that when he retired - in 2007 - he was supposed to file paperwork within 120 days to switch that over, and he didn't, which means all Mom got was something like $35k - which, when you have to pay funeral expenses AND replace a whole bunch of things your asshole husband destroyed on his way out the door AND you have two kids in college AND your only car is a pickup truck with a manual transmission that currently has to be started with a screwdriver, doesn't last very long - so she couldn't even pay off the mortgage.

Which brings us to the next problem. Because Mom's name wasn't on the mortgage, Navy Federal wouldn't send her bills. She sent them at least three copies of his death certificate. She sent them a copy of the probated will stating that she was his sole heir. She sent them the deed on the house showing that she was the sole owner. She called them repeatedly trying to get them to fucking deal with her already. Every time, she got the same answers. "We can't transfer the mortgage into your name." "We can't give you that information." "We don't care who pays it, as long as we get our money." They sent mail in my father's name. She sent them back with "DECEASED" written across the front because she still can't legally open his mail even if he's dead. They sent mail addressed to "The Estate of [Dad's Name]". She sent them back with a note that there was no estate.

They sent mail addressed to my mom. It had absolutely no information on it beyond "Oh, you're behind on your payments! Call us to get back on track!" Didn't tell her how much the payments were, didn't tell her the account number - so she couldn't really call them and get things going - didn't tell her anything.

She had the mortgage on auto-pay for a long time, but this past December, there was a glitch with my dad's pension (he got 50% of his base pay from his time in the Navy after he retired; as his widow, my mom is entitled to 80% of that, which isn't a lot but more or less was covering the mortgage payments) and it didn't come in on time. Because our payday didn't line up with the due date on the mortgage, she put a temporary stop on the auto-payments.

Here is another thing you need to know about my mom. She was diagnosed with clinical depression in 1998, following the death of her father and a devastating miscarriage, but the doctor took her history and realized she'd probably had it since she was a child. She was in therapy for it. My brother and I had been encouraging her to bring up another issue with her therapist for almost a year, and this past June, she finally did. And after a short round of testing, she was diagnosed with - and put on medication for - ADHD, which she'd also had most of her life.

You can probably guess where this is going. She forgot to reinstate the auto-pay. And, of course, since Navy Federal wouldn't send her mail in her name, she had no idea.

At the end of March, I got a weird letter in the mail from the city stating that I owed real estate taxes on the house. I brought it to my mom, confused about why I'd gotten it. We eventually got hold of someone at the city office, and it turned out that somehow, through a bureaucratic snafu of some kind, the house had been transferred into my name. Mom managed to get it transferred back, but it was still a headache and a half.

And then suddenly, the letters from Navy Federal (still addressed to my dad and Estate Of, with no useful information in what was addressed to my mom) started coming again.

Sometime in late August, Mom got a letter from a law firm telling her that the mortgage was in default - which was when it hit her that she hadn't reinstated the auto-pay - and that she had a limited amount of time to correct it. She immediately filed a dispute on the charges, under the grounds that she's not responsible for her dead husband's debts. The law firm dutifully sent her the results of the dispute...which, while it was in their favor, did at least contain all the information she'd been trying to get the bank to give her for the last fourteen years, so she at least had something to work with. She was trying to get hold of a lawyer through the Legal Resources thing we're signed up for through work, and the realtor who helped us buy the house initially put her in touch with a bunch of people she was hoping could help us refinance or get a new mortgage.

And then, early this week, we got hit with an unexpected blow. Mom called the law firm that's been sending us all this paperwork to get some updated figures and found out that the house went into foreclosure. They scheduled the sale for November 28.

This is where I'm really proud of my mom and all the progress she's been making, actually. Even a year ago, getting this kind of news would have meant she fell apart, blamed herself for being so stupid as to let the payments get behind (which was not helped by the fact that most of the people she called for help basically said "If you'd just made the payments, this wouldn't be a problem"), and curled into a ball of depression and hopelessness. She wouldn't have bothered doing anything but blaming herself, and by the time she got around to trying something, if she got around to trying something, it would be too late. Instead, she gave herself a day of "I don't know what to do", had a mini-meltdown after asking my uncle if he had thought about where he was going to go if we lost the house (he'll be 71 this December and he's on oxygen), and then set about trying to see what she could do.

She called Navy Federal on Thursday and managed to get through to someone, and this is where the "I'd like to dig my father up and kill him again" bit comes in. In going over all the late fees and whatnot piled up on the mortgage, he mentioned that the first one was in 2008. Let me repeat - 2008. Over a year before he died. The mortgage was behind before my mom ever took it over and she didn't know, and that fee has been compounding ever since. She swore. A lot. And asked the guy to give her a minute because she was crying.

He waived as many of the fees as he could - he can't do anything about the lawyer fees because they've already paid those out, but he waived the late fees. And he quoted her a figure. So instead of having to pay off the whole mortgage, or vacate the premises, we basically have to pay $9,721.28 to reinstate the mortgage, and then the payments will be around $912 a month from here on out. That is a lot more doable than the $40k we thought.

So, yeah, that's the current story. My uncle is paying $4k of that, we just have to come up with the other $6k by the end of November. Mom wants to have it paid off by Halloween if possible. We're...working on it.