This is long winded but I have to start from the beginning. It's complicated and I really don't even know what to call this scam.
A little over 4 years ago my husband and I were wanting out of our apartment due to poor living conditions. We were considering buying a house because we had a new baby and wanted to establish some roots. I am a victim of ID theft and my husband had no established credit. At the time he was 19 and I was 23.
My mother put me in touch with her mortgage broker Brackie Simmons at A A Mortgage Inc. About getting a loan. They both told us that our credit was so bad we could not get a decent loan and that she would have to co-sign on the house we wanted to buy.
The house we live in now was at the time going for $89,500. My husband and I were completely ignorant to how the loan process worked and we were told by my mother and her broker that she would sign the house completely over to us in a year, after we built our credit by paying on the mortgage. We would transfer the house into our names only and get a new mortgage at an interest rate we could afford. The broker told us we could get the loan right then but it would be at a 10% interest rate on our own and that having her as a co-signer would get us a 5.5% interest rate.
They reassured us that it was our house, just a technicality so we didn't have to pay a high payment for a year while we straightened out our credit situation.
It seemed like a good idea.
Well when it came time for the closing she told us we didn't have to show up, that she would handle it etc. We didn't realize anything was wrong because we were completely unfamiliar with the loan process itself.
What she ended up doing, (and I didn't find out until way later) is she ended up taking a home equity loan out against the house she lives in and got the loan completely in her name purchasing the house we live in. So the house we live in was free and clear and we had been paying on a loan in her name only.
She always had me write the checks out to her for the $511.01 every month and told me she was signing the checks over to the mortgage company so it showed that we were paying on it. I paid for the homeowners insurance seperately through citizen's in Tampa.
Not only did we pay the loan on this house thinking it was ours, we rennovated it as well. As we were doing our own rennovations my mother started pitching in a little herself. We tried telling her "thanks but no thanks" because we didn't want to be indebted to her but she wouldn't take no for an answer saying that "mother's just like to do nice things for their children" etc. So she did spend some of her money. She bought a stove, microwave and dishwasher and pitched in on the tile. BTW, these were all surprise gifts that just showed up and she insisted they were just gifts and she wanted nothing in return.
Everytime the AC broke down my husband and I paid to have it repaired along with paying the home warranty company's fee. When the septic system went out, we paid thousands of dollars for a brand new one, all the permits, fixing the lawn afterwards etc. Then one day an AC company shows up and they are there to install a new air conditioner that she ordered on her credit card taking us completely by surprise.
We kept telling her to stop with these extravagant gifts for the house, that its too much but she insisted since she is an RN and makes over 50k a year that it just made her feel good to help us out, that we don't owe her anything and that she was just making up for our troubled past.
So in all reality she probably spent about 3k total of her own money on rennovating this house.
We did the septic, lawn, paint inside and out, my husband tiled the floor himself, put in new windows, put in fans and lighting and has done some plumbing work like repairing the water heater, toilets, sinks and refrigerator. We even paid for the little things like the home inspection prior to buying it, the little fees here and there everytime something broke etc.
Anyway, after the year came and went regarding the house, I tried getting her to sign it over to us. She kept telling me she would. She even called up there in front of me asking how to do it. She told me that we needed to get a quit claim deed and go. So we took off to do that. I told her to stop and get the quit claim deed but she said "Oh you don't need that, lets just go talk to them". Of course when we got there she played dumb and put it off until another day saying she ran out of time.
Then every time I asked her to sign it over, she refused, coming up with a new excuse each time. I even went so far as to inquire about loans and found out that I could indeed get a loan. At this point I was willing to take the high interest and refinance later on just to get it in our names. I was becoming increasingly concerned about her motives.
There was a lot of arguing about her deception regarding this house. Excuse after excuse why she couldn't sign it over. She even faked having a brain tumor to make me feel like she just couldn't handle the transaction and to lay off of her etc. Though she was still working full time. I found out from her job by playing dumb and calling down there as someone from her doctor's office that she didn't have a brain tumor at all. Apparantly she had hit her head on the same television set 3 times in 3 months and was taking off of work and having workmans' comp pay her for her time lost from work. At the same time telling me these doctor's appointments were for a neurologist for her brain tumor!
About 8 months ago, after lots of me calling her out on things I was concerned about, she came up here to talk about the house situation and told us flat out that she has decided she is selling our house. We got in this big fight. She basically feels entitled to my house, all the equity and not even reimbursting us for the money we put into it for 4 years and her little saying she keeps reiterating is "Things change and so must we". She told us that she was selling it, keeping all the equity because of the money she spent on the house. She said that she was in serious debt of about 40k because of money she spent on our house. I am not stupid I know she didn't spend anywhere near that amount. That's like what we spent not her! I knew I didn't want to accept those gifts but she practically shoved them down our throats and made us feel like assholes for even questioning her about it and not wanting them. "I wish I had someone who wanted to spend money on my house to help my resale value, you are ungrateful, bla bla bla" is what she would say to us, belittling us and making us feel bad!
I can't tell you how heated things got. I blew up at her and so did my husband! She even tried taking my son from me that night saying that I was out of control and a horrible mother for being so ungrateful to her and that she would be at her property in Costa Rica before I could call law enforcement. She even said she already got his passport. I literally had to grab my son from her! At this point I was beligerant.
Then she stopped taking our monthly payment of $511.01 a month and told us that she paid off the loan. I did my own research and found out she got a $200k adjustable rate mortgage on the house she lives in, paying off the loan she took out to buy the house we live in. I think she just figured she would get us out, sell it right away and turn a huge profit.
Our house is now worth at least $180k.
We told her we refused to leave and that this was our house and we weren't about to let her take it from us this way. She said she would just evict us then.
Then immediately she cancels the homeowners insurance I paid for and said we better get out of the house before the hurricanes come.
Then she started putting all this Santeria stuff on our doorstep weekly trying to scare us out. See she used to live in the Carribean and she praciced Santeria but she convinced me she had changed and was a christian now, going to church and everything.
Well for months now, every week there are chicken bones, crab shells, red dust, hooves and dirt on my doorstep.
Believe me I know this sounds like a scene from a really bad daytime soap but this is seriously what I am going through.
I have told her numerous times that if she would just sign this house over to me, I'd have a lawyer draw up papers so it was all legal, stipulating that she get back the remaining $86k she recently paid off minus the $14,400 she still owes me from the past, and that the house be sold in 6 months or less. She refuses to do it.
She said that we could buy it from her for $95k though. So we've been paying the mortgage, insurance, taxes, and tons of things renters do not pay for the whole time she tells us this is our house and now in order to avoid eviction she wants me to pay her more money than the amount the house cost? The reason it was only $86k balance was because WE not HER paid the loan for 4 years and that is what was left over! The $14,400 is from a settlement she tricked me into signing over to her that she apologized for blaming it all on my dad and promised to pay me back when she sold her Costa Rica property.
So after not having anything to do with me or my son, and avoiding me like the plague for the past 7 months she shows up yesterday at my son's 4th birthday party, attempting to break into the house from the back window. Punching it with her fist and saying if I don't let her in she is going to evict us. That she only came up here to see where our head was regarding this house and to tell us we had to get out because she was selling it.
She had a friend out front on my driveway and when I went outside to tell her to leave she pretended to know nothing about what she just did in my backyard! She denied doing it, acted like I was crazy and when I started telling her friend what she did to us regarding this house she acted surprised and started with the fake crying. I even brought up the witchcraft and the harassment and she denied it flatly.
So now here we are, broke from fixing everything wrong with this house. Literally no money in the savings at the moment and are facing her evicting us from our own investment.
I just don't know what to do. I didn't know where else to go for advice.
I know I could contest the eviction but I don't know what rights I have and I know I can't afford a lawyer. A contingency fee lawyer would be putting me in the same situation, I'd have to sell the house and take a loss because he'd probably get half the value or something like that!
I feel really bad about not letting her see my son on his birthday but I feel like I would be crazy to allow her to bond with him and he be taken advantage of the way she has done to me in the future. He already saw what happened with her threatening to take him from me and run to C.R. And he doesn't like her anyway.
I don't know what to call this scam, I don't know what rights I have and I just need help before I lose my investment.
Does anyone know what I can do?
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