Woman urges others to keep close tabs on elderly parents’ financial affairs
- Posted by admin on December 20th, 2007 filed in Reverse Mortgage Info
DENVER - When Janet Thompson’s family moved into their home on Monaco Street in 1962, she knew they’d be there forever.
“I thought it was the biggest structure I had ever seen,” said Thompson.
After 45 years, she received a shocking phone call. A friend had seen the home in an ad for house auctions.
Janet Thompson’s mother, Nannette Rease, had taken out a reverse mortgage on the house.
Unbeknownst to Thompson, Rease had also been suffering from dementia.
“She was incapable of handling it from a medical standpoint,” said Thompson.
The loan Rease took out was for $200,000. She was supposed to give the funds to an annuity company, which would invest the money and give her some back.
Instead, Thompson says her mother spent the money.
“She basically gave away the money and spent it very quickly,” said Thompson.
Jose Vasquez, an attorney with the non-profit group Colorado Legal Services, says for seniors who often have a lot of equity in their homes, reverse mortgages can be risky.
He suggests that children of elderly people keep track of their parents’ activities.
“Talk to them about their financial affairs. Talk to them about their life,” he said.
Vasquez adds that mortgage brokers are not required to check the mental state of their clients.
Thompson fought for two years to reverse the damage that was done as a result of her mother’s dementia.
“I’ve shed many tears and it’s been very difficult,” she said.
The ordeal, however, did end with somewhat of a victory.
Although her mother’s home went into foreclosure, Thompson was able to buy it back and hopes to renovate and move her mother back in, next year.
“I’m weary,” she said. “But I haven’t given up.”
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December 20th, 2007 at 2:39 pm
For the record, I wrote to the reporter who both filed this television news story and wrote the article. Among other things, I challenged the ethics behind using the headline implicating the reverse mortgage as a “threat”.
The article also goes on to denounce reverse mortgage lenders because they “are not required to check the mental state of their clients.” Is there a loan out there which does require this? That’s a ridiculous comment to put in a news article. I also challenged the idea that it’s up to us to determine something when the family who knew her intimately had no idea she had medical issues. Perhaps they could have figured this out and obtained power of attorney.
There were a lot of problems with this reporting, including the fact that they did absolutely nothing to research reverse mortgages or even get a comment from anyone within the industry.
The reporter replied to my letter saying she would hold on to the facts I provided her for “future stories”, but to her credit, she did go back and change the printed article’s headline to “Woman urges others to keep close tabs on elderly parents’ financial affairs” in response to my letter. While that is somewhat gratifying, it doesn’t completely set the record straight and still throws the reverse mortgage process under the bus. It does nothing to explain the circumstances which caused her to be in default on her reverse mortgage. Did she stop paying her property tax? Did she stop paying her homeowners insurance? Did she let the home fall into a state of disrepair exposing the lender to undue risk?
It’s important to know the facts…or at least attempt to get them before rushing to judgment.