I
am in a situation where I am trying to help one of our local senior
citizens here in Pine Bush, New York. She has owned and lived
in her home for over 50 years now, and recently, she re-mortgaged it
because she needed extra income. She is 85 years old living
on Social Security and was not able to get by. She got a
referral from a friend and dealt with a mortgage broker and took out
what seemed like a reverse mortgage.
Without giving all of the details, she received checks for a period of
time and was making monthly payments to a Bank, but then the checks
stopped. Recently, she started receiving notices that she was
in jeopardy of losing her home if she could not continue to make the
monthly payments. Because she only received a very small
portion of the money that she was supposed to get as a result of the
mortgage, she is back in the same situation. She went to see an attorney and he was really not able to
help her.
It is very sad to see a senior citizen (or anyone else) taken advantage
of this way. We were able to get a copy of the mortgage and
the other documents that were recorded in the County Clerk's office,
and, as the attorney pointed out, they appear to be legitimate.
However, she has received hardly any of the money!
We are encouraging her to contact the press so that they can
maybe do some further investigation and bring this into the light.
She cannot afford to pay an attorney so we thought that
getting the press involved would be a good alternative.
She has so much pride and does not want to speak out "at her age".
She just wants to "be quiet". We need to encourage
our Senior Citizens not to feel embarrassed and afraid to speak out or
to ask for help. There are people that can help that will not
take advantage. Please, do not be afraid to ask for advice.
We hope that we will be able to sell her house for enough money so that
she can pay off her mortgage and move on with her life, which is what
she wants to do.
