Fatal Equity
Every story has an ‘aha’ moment when seeing or hearing something causes a bell in an anuthor’s head to announce, ‘that’s an idea for a book’. Not so, this one. It took a steady drumbeat of ads from aging celebrities on cable channels to pound into my consciousness that retirement is one of the scariest decisions a person can make.
Once I started kicking over rocks, I found all the fodder I needed for this book. If you Google ‘reverse mortgage horror stories’ and you’ll see what I mean. Everything in Senior Equity Lending Solutions’ nefarious bag of tricks has been pulled on vulnerable elderly.
The genesis of the Provençal linens subplot, on the other hand, has stared me in the face multiple times each day for five years. They are the bounty of one of those ‘pop-up’ sales described in the book. As to the Conseil de Commerce des Tissus Provençaux, I have no idea if such an organization exists. If it does, I hope its real-life equivalent of Marie Deveraux is properly appreciated and financially compensated.
Fatal Equity is my third installment of the series that began with The Garden Club Gang. Six months have passed since the events of Deadly Deeds. One evening, Alice Beauchamp receives a call from an old friend asking Alice to look in on her parakeets over the next day or two. Something about that call doesn’t sound right and Alice pays an unannounced call. She finds her friend making out a checklist to end her life. Why? Because to finance her now-deceased husband’s end-of-life care, she took out a reverse mortgage on her home. The issuer has found an irregularity and either wants its money back (plus monumental fees and interest) or it will sell the house out from underneath Alice’s friend.
That sends the Gang into action. What kind of a mortgage company would prey on the elderly? Welcome to the world of Senior Equity Lending Services, an organization that operates in the murky world of reverse mortgages. Senior Equity has fended off every investigation by showing it meticulously plays by the rules, but far too many of its customers end up in Alice’s friend’s position. The ladies need to get close to Senior Equity in order to investigate it. They have a plan: move into the same building with a make-believe business selling fancy French linens over the internet. Their phony company, though, needs a real website. A well-connected woman whom the Ladies helped in Deadly Deeds is more than willing to assist in having it created.
The problem is that their make-believe company suddenly has real orders. As they cope with unexpected and unwanted success, they also have to find the evidence to bring Senior Equity to justice. By the end of the story, you’ll be thoroughly educated on the difference between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ reverse mortgages, as well as on the marketing of fine Provencal linens. You’ll also have laughed out loud for hours on end.
Here are the opening chapters:
Chapter One
Tuesday evening
Alice Beauchamp had no idea she was about to save someone’s life when she answered her phone on a Tuesday evening in August. It was the voice of a dear, old friend with a benign request.
“I’m flying out to see Jeannie in the morning but can’t find anyone to look in on Cleo and Franny. Would you stop by tomorrow and Friday and make certain they have seed and water?”
Alice readily agreed to the task. The conversation had taken less than a minute. The two parakeets had been the principal sources of joy and comfort for Rebecca Cooper since the death of her husband two months earlier. Being asked to watch over them for a day or two was an honor.
But Alice’s phone was barely back in its cradle when the gnawing feeling something wasn’t right began to intrude on her thoughts.
Rebecca’s daughter lived in New Mexico. Including changing planes, flying from Boston to Albuquerque consumed the better part of a day in each direction. Yet Rebecca had asked that Alice come by for just two days. Only one day with her daughter? That made no sense.
And at Frank’s wake, Jeannie Cooper had spoken of the stress from practically commuting between Albuquerque and Denver; never knowing which city she would awaken in on any given day. Her employer, she said, seemed to take pleasure in keeping her guessing where she would next be needed.
Also, the trip seemed to come out of the blue. Spur-of-the-moment travel had never been part of Frank and Rebecca’s lifestyle in the thirty years Alice had known them. To the contrary, even a weekend jaunt to Vermont required poring over maps and multiple consultations of guide books.
Ten minutes after the call and five minutes after gathering her purse and car keys, Alice pulled into the driveway at 217 Metacomet Road. It was a house Alice knew well, part of a Hardington subdivision built in the early 1970s near the home where she once lived. Sited on a now-densely-wooded acre of land, the split-level structure had been Frank and Rebecca’s brand-new dream home when they moved into it in 1973. They had raised two children here. And, for the past four years, it had been the convalescent space where Rebecca cared for her invalid husband as his health declined.
There were no lights on in the front of the house, but that was not unusual. The large, seldom-used formal living and dining rooms were to the left and right of the front door. Rebecca would be in one of the three rooms at the back of the house that had come to be the perimeter of her existence in the final months of Frank’s illness.
Alice rang the doorbell but heard no response from inside. She tried the front door and, not surprisingly, found it unlocked. Crime was rare in Hardington and neighbors watched over one another’s homes.
“Becky?” Alice said, announcing herself as she stepped into the darkness. She heard only the sound of the two parakeets coming from the family room, from which also emanated a dim light. Unwilling to turn on lamps that were not her own, Alice slowly followed the light to its source.
In its heyday, the spacious room had been the center of family life. Jeannie and Gregory had been popular student athletes. It was not uncommon to come to the house in the afternoon to find a lacrosse scrimmage on the front lawn and the hockey team in the family room sprawled across chairs and sofas, engaged in a group study session.
But that was 25 years earlier. Frank’s diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis had progressed from an inconvenience to a forced retirement. Five years ago, Rebecca and Frank were faced with the reality that, because of the progression and severity of the disease, he would not live to see 75 and, within a year, he would be unable to care for himself. Unwilling to place her husband in a nursing home, Rebecca instead engaged a team of home health aides. The family room was converted to an infirmary and she saw to her husband’s needs until the end.
Alice entered the family room. Frank’s bed and the ancillary equipment required for his care were no longer in evidence, but neither had the displaced furnishings been returned from storage. The room now was empty except for a large birdcage, a writing desk and a chair.
At the desk, wearing a bathrobe and a towel around her head, sat Rebecca Cooper. In front of her were several sheets of writing paper; in her hand, a pen. On the edge of the desk was a short stack of what looked like business papers and correspondence. Only a desk lamp illuminated the room.
She and Alice were the same age – seventy-two. Osteoporosis had shrunk Rebecca’s frame to about five feet six inches. Always slender, she was now gaunt; the years of providing for all of her husband’s care had caused Rebecca to neglect her own. Oddly, she wore carefully applied makeup.
“Are you all right, Becky?” Alice asked.
Rebecca turned her head toward Alice. “Why are you here this evening?” she asked querulously. “You’re not supposed to come until tomorrow.”
Alice crossed the room and placed her hand on Rebecca’s shoulder. “I’m here because I think you need me.”
Rebecca slowly shook her head. “Tomorrow. You should be here tomorrow. I should have put you further down the list but I couldn’t be certain what time you went to bed.”
Alice did not respond. Instead, peering over Rebecca’s shoulder, she read the list on the desk. Rebecca made no effort to cover it. Most of the items were crossed off – tasks apparently completed – but the last two items were neatly written:
Write explanatory note
Take pills
“Why?” Alice asked in a soft voice. There was no need to expand the question.
Rebecca slowly reached for and pulled to the center of the desk a quarter-inch-thick stack of papers, on top of which was multi-page letter on the letterhead of a law firm. She fumbled with the pages, finally finding the one she wanted.
“They’re going to foreclose on my house,” she said, her voice a monotone. “They’re going to sell it. They promised I could stay here for the rest of my life. But now I have to leave. I have no money and no place to go.” She added, with a shrug of her shoulder, “And I’m not certain I have anything left to live for.”
Alice tried to make sense of the letter but it was all legalese. It might as well have been written in Latin. Returning it to the desk, she said in a firm voice, “You, Cleo and Franny are coming home with me for tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll sort this out.”
The two women spoke little on the short drive home. Alice’s head, though, swirled with thoughts of what almost certainly would have happened had she not driven to Metacomet Road when she did. Tomorrow, she would have come to feed two parakeets only to instead discover her friend dead of an overdose of whatever pain medications remained from Frank’s final illness. She would have found the note Rebecca intended to leave, and it would have fallen to her to locate Jeannie and Gregory and break the horrific news to them.
Alice also wondered if the call to her was a final plea for help; made to the one person in a position to intervene. As the relatively small gathering for Frank’s wake and funeral attested, most of the couple’s friends had long since moved away. Once a town where even people of modest means could afford to live, Hardington had moved decidedly ‘upscale’ in the past few decades. Taxes were high to provide the kinds of services affluent residents expected. Small homes were sold for the inflated value of their land; their owners took the proceeds and moved to the Cape or to Florida.
What Alice knew above all was she was not equipped to help Rebecca solve the problem that had nearly caused her to take her life. Alice could provide friendship and comforting, but it would take a group of resourceful people to parse the letter she had received and find a way to undo Rebecca’s pending eviction.
Tomorrow morning, she would call them.
Chapter Two
Wednesday morning
Samantha Ayers fumed as she re-read the letter and its supporting document. Bloodsuckers, she mumbled to herself. Thieves, crooks and charlatans.
Samantha was a tall, attractive woman who looked younger than her 28 years. At 20 she had been the third generation of her family to join the Worcester Police Department but, after five years, she determined that while race was no longer a barrier to advancement (her father was a Lieutenant, and likely to be made a Captain before the year was out), sexism still ran rampant. After enduring an endless stream of assignments as a decoy high school student, collegiate drug buyer, and prostitute, she resigned.
Over the past three years she had found her niche as an investigator for Massachusetts Casualty Insurance Company. In the past twelve months Samantha had solved a high-profile theft at the Brookfield Fair and, in the process, uncovered municipal corruption in the town. She had brought down a chain of automotive dealerships that solved its cash flow problems by torching unsaleable cars. In doing so, she also unmasked the patriarch of that organization as the head of a counterfeit auto parts ring.
They met in Alice’s Hardington townhouse. Alice felt no need to explain to Rebecca the close relationship she and three of her close friends had with Samantha. How they had banded together a year earlier to form ‘the Garden Club Gang’ and that Samantha had saved Alice’s life (and spared ‘the gang’ from a likely stay in prison for robbery). She simply introduced Samantha as, “my friend, and someone who knows something about these things.”
Samantha put down the papers and slowly shook her head. “Mrs. Cooper, start at the beginning. And please don’t think that something is too trivial to mention.”
Rebecca Cooper did not flinch from the request. “Frank and I had a pact. We made it when we were, I think, about sixty-five. We would never put one another in a nursing home. We hated them. We hated what they did to people’s spirits. We would take care of one another and, if things went too far downhill, we would help the incapacitated person to die peacefully.”
Rebecca leaned forward in the dining room chair in which she sat. “Then Frank was diagnosed with MS. Not the easy kind like Jed Bartlet had on The West Wing; not that any MS diagnosis is easy. Frank was ultimately diagnosed with an aggressive form of Progressive-Relapsing MS. There were never periods of remission. Every month seemed to bring a fresh symptom. He couldn’t walk for the last two years and couldn’t swallow for the last few months.”
“Frank and I were hardly well-to-do; he was the Hardington Postmaster and I taught third grade. He had a good pension with good medical benefits. But do you know what the annual cost is for a drug like Tysabri? More than $60,000 and the insurance company made us pay half. And that’s just one drug.”
Rebecca leaned back in her chair. “We had just about exhausted our savings when we got one of those letters. ‘Is a reverse mortgage right for you?’ I went to an ‘informational luncheon’ and there was a nice young man sitting right next to me. I told him about Frank’s deteriorating condition. He made all the right sympathetic noises, then asked where we lived. When I told him, he said, ‘Hardington! Your home has got to be worth a fortune!’ I said we didn’t live in one of ‘those’ houses and he just waved aside what I said. ‘I’ll bet your home is worth a half million or more,’ he said. ‘You won’t have to pay it back. And they can never make you move out of your home. It’s yours for life.’”
Samantha glanced down at the paperwork. “So this ‘nice young man’ was with Senior Equity Lending Services?”
Rebecca shook her head. “No, he said he was a ‘reverse mortgage consultant’ and told me he would find Frank and me the best deal from among all the companies he dealt with. He said his services wouldn’t cost us anything. He kept saying the mortgage would be insured; and stressing we wouldn’t have to pay back anything.”
“Did you hire a lawyer?” Samantha asked.
Rebecca again shook her head. “A lawyer would have cost us several thousand dollars. We wouldn’t have that kind of money until we had a mortgage. Bryce – that was the young man’s name – got us a meeting with Chad, the Company’s President. I remember that meeting so well… the first thing Chad asked me was, ‘Who is your favorite actor of all time?’ It didn’t take me two seconds to answer. ‘Angela Lansbury,’ I said. ‘I always loved Murder, She Wrote.’ Chad let out this ‘Whoop!’ and clapped his hands. ‘So you’ve seen our commercials? Angela is our celebrity endorser. She has brought us more customers than I can count. Oh, my gosh. Wait until I tell everyone.’ Of course, I had never seen those commercials, but I didn’t want to sound stupid. So I just nodded. But he kept going on about ‘Angela this’ and ‘Angela that’ and promised he would introduce me the next time she was in Boston.”
Samantha had been tapping her phone for a few seconds. She shook her head. “Angela Lansbury has never endorsed any reverse mortgage product.” She turned the screen to show Rebecca.
Rebecca nodded. “I figured that out eventually. But he had me believing I had seen her commercials dozens of times. He asked me whether I liked the one better of her in the floor-length silver gown or whether she looked like she had just come in from working in the garden. I chose the gardening one because I am – or was – a gardener. He even told me she used plants from her own garden when they were filming.” She shook her head. “I was a fool.”
Samantha leafed through the paperwork. “You signed loan origination agreements, inspection agreements, title insurance, waivers to claim… even one that said you understood you were not reviewing materials with your own attorney…”
Rebecca again nodded. “They kept telling me about getting the funds to keep Frank at home. Of course, the ‘half million’ number disappeared almost immediately. Our house is assessed by the town at more than $600,000 but their appraiser said the number wasn’t realistic because it was a split-level and no one wants our kind of house any more. Also, we had modified it for a wheelchair ramp and to set up Frank’s infirmary. In the end, they said it was worth…”
“Three hundred and thirteen thousand,” Samantha said, reading from the document. “And they would give you seventy percent of that less an origination fee of four percent and enough other fees to get your total available funds to $202,600.”
“Which kept Frank at home for another eighteen months,” Rebecca said, sighing. “And the last of the funds paid for his funeral. Frank’s pension ended with his death. I still have my social security. It isn’t much but, combined with being able to stay in my home, I thought it would be enough.”
“And then you received the foreclosure notice,” Samantha said. “I can only imagine what kind of shock it was.”
“It was the amount that puzzled me,” Rebecca said. “So much more than they gave me.”
Samantha turned a page. “You drew out the full $202,600. Then they wanted back all their fees. That was $26,500. And, they wanted interest on what they considered a loan. That was another $31,337. And they want a ‘termination fee’ of $30,000. So, from their perspective, you need to pay them $290,437; otherwise, they have every right to sell your house out from underneath you.”
“But why can’t I stay in the house?” Rebecca said. “They promised.”
“That’s what we need to understand,” Samantha said. “You added your son’s name to your home’s deed. What prompted you to do that?”
Rebecca was silent for a moment. “When it became apparent Frank had just a few weeks to live, I went back to see Chad. I explained to him Frank was failing and it might be better if I sold my home and moved into an apartment. I explained all the money they had given me had gone to Frank’s care, and I thought I had enough to cover his final expenses. Chad expressed his sympathy and asked that I wait in the reception area while he found all my files.”
“That was when I met Margaret. Margaret was a woman who said she was seventy-five, though she looked a great deal younger. I told her about Frank, and she said her own husband died just three weeks earlier, and she was so glad she had added her sister to the deed to her home because now both she and her sister were protected. Her sister was just sixty and longevity runs in the family. She said if I added my son or my daughter to the deed, then they would also be able to remain in the house after I passed. She said it was the secret that all these reverse mortgage companies didn’t want you to know about.”
“We chatted a few more minutes and then Chad came out to say he could meet with me again. He listened to my plan to sell the house and said I shouldn’t act hastily, because many of the worst decisions were made under emotional duress.”
“That was the extent of it?” Samantha asked. “You went to the Registry of Deeds and added your son to your home deed?”
Rebecca shook her head. “No. I thought about it, but it sounded, well, unethical. Like I was taking advantage of the arrangement. I was grateful for what Senior Equity had done. They gave me another eighteen months with Frank, and I was able to keep my promise to him. What happened was, three days later I was at the Roche Brothers in Hardington and I literally ran into Margaret’s cart or, rather, she ran into mine. She said she didn’t know I lived in Hardington and what a surprise it was to see me again.”
“Did she say she lived here?” Samantha asked.
Rebecca again shook her head. “She said she lived ‘a few towns over’ but there wasn’t a Roche Brothers near her and so she shopped here. She offered to buy me coffee and a pastry. Neither of us had much of anything in our carts, so we just went next door to the Silver Spoon. After about five minutes of chit-chatting, she asked if I had added either of my children to the deed. I explained that, while it was a good idea, it was cheating on the agreement, and I didn’t want anyone to be angry with me when they found out.”
“How did Margaret react?” Samantha asked.
“She laughed,” Rebecca said. “She said these reverse mortgage companies gets tens of millions of dollars from the government to make these loans possible. She said when she told Chad about the fact she had added her sister, he was delighted and said it showed she had ‘learned how to game the system’ – I think those were the words she used. Then she said it was so simple and explained how to do it.”
“Could you recognize her if you saw her again?” Samantha asked.
“I did see her again,” Rebecca replied. “Two days later. I was at the CVS picking up something. And there was Margaret again. This time I thought it a little odd because every town around here has either a CVS or something just like it, so she surely couldn’t have driven to Hardington from wherever she lives just to go to our drugstore.”
“Did it occur to you these meetings weren’t just an accident?” Samantha asked.
“Not until it was too late,” Rebecca said, a rueful tone to her voice. “This time there were hardly any cordialities. She said I owed it to Frank and to my family. That as soon as I passed, the house would go to the highest bidder and they would immediately tear it down. She said it was a disservice to Frank’s memory. But if my son was in the house, all those memories would live on for decades to come. She said she knew my daughter lived too far away, but Gregory was close enough by that he could commute. I didn’t remember telling Margaret the names of my children, but I may have.”
“And so you went to the County Registry of Deeds,” Samantha said.
“Margaret even offered to drive me,” Rebecca said, regret in her voice. “I said I could drive myself. I went that afternoon.”
“And you never saw Margaret again,” Samantha said.
Rebecca just shook her head.
“But you’d recognize her.”
“Without a doubt,” Rebecca said.
“Do you remember the dates you saw her?”
Rebecca thought for a second. “I save all my receipts for my taxes. The dates will be on those.”
Samantha jotted a note. “How long was it after you added Gregory’s name you were notified by Senior Equity that adding someone’s name to the deed to your home placed you in default of the terms of the reverse mortgage?”
Rebecca’s eyes moistened for the first time. “Frank was failing so quickly. We all knew it was a matter of days. My mind wasn’t on bills so I just let mail stack up unopened on the desk. I didn’t read any letters until a week after the funeral. As soon as I read the first one, I opened all the others and was shocked. I called Chad’s office but was told my ‘account’ was now in the hands of their law firm. All my calls to that law firm went to voice mail, where I was informed communications had to be by registered letter.”
Alice passed Rebecca a box of tissues. Rebecca took one and dabbed at her eyes. “Which was when I realized what a fool I had been; and began to understand I had been swindled.” She paused. “And I started to understand I was probably better off just going to join Frank.”
Alice and Samantha were silent while Rebecca composed herself. After a minute, Rebecca said, “Alice, I owe you an apology. I was going to put you in a horrible position. No person should ever have to find…”
Alice reached across the table and took her friend’s hands. “The important thing is you’re here with us now.” Alice turned to look at Samantha. “And can we do something about it?”
Samantha nodded slowly. “This is fraud. That’s for certain. I have a lot of things to check into before I can offer any suggestions. It’s clear ‘Margaret’ is working with those people. No one ‘just happens’ to be sitting outside an office like that. And she was effectively stalking Rebecca – showing up at a supermarket and a drug store a few minutes after Rebecca did the same. Nothing like that happens in a vacuum. Which means, I’ll bet, Rebecca isn’t the first person to find themselves with a foreclosure notice from these folks. By the end of today I’ll have a better picture.”
Addressing herself to Rebecca, Samantha said, “I need to take photos of these letters so I can find out more about ‘Senior Equity Lending Services’ and ‘Chad’ and all the other cast of characters. In the meantime, you need to see an attorney. You need legal advice and you need it in a hurry.”
“But I can’t afford…” Rebecca started to say.
“We’ll talk to someone today,” Alice said.
* * * * *
“You’ve been dealing with the scum of the earth. The worst kind of criminals – people who prey on the elderly. And who hide behind the law.”
The person speaking these blunt words was Diane Terwilliger. She was a woman somewhere in her sixties who looked as though she might have been an athlete in her younger years. She was of medium height, but there was a muscular feel beneath the skirted suit she wore. Her short, gray hair was offset by large, round glasses with thick, black rims. The immediate visual impression she sent was she was not to be trifled with.
Terwilliger was seated in the same chair at the small dining room table Samantha Ayers had occupied a few hours earlier. An attorney with her primary practice in Hardington, Terwilliger knew Alice Beauchamp only slightly; she had created a trust that owned the townhouse in which Alice now resided. But Terwilliger was well known to a woman named Paula Winters. A call from Alice to Paula resulted in Terwilliger shuffling an appointment in order to meet with Alice and Rebecca on less than an hour’s notice.
Terwilliger leafed through the sheaf of papers, laying out the various forms Rebecca Cooper has signed.
“The first thing you need to know is this isn’t an HECM-compliant mortgage,” she said. “A Home Equity Conversion Mortgage caps the origination fee at something like $6,000 and has all manner of cooling-off periods where a senior can change his or her mind without penalty. There’s a specific prohibition against termination fees. There’s mandatory counseling before the mortgage is issued along with other assurances that protect the borrower. The problem is, with HECM-compliant mortgages, the table is tilted so heavily toward the borrower that most banks have gotten out of the business because there’s too little money to be made. As such, the groups that are doing HECMs are non-profits and they’re hard to find. That’s what leaves the door open for sharks like Senior Equity.”
Terwilliger began laying documents across the dining room table. “And look what these guys have done to protect themselves,” she said, pointing at the first sheet of paper.
“They had you sign an affidavit acknowledging you were making these decisions without having had consulted an attorney,” Terwilliger said. “They were covering their collective asses three ways from Sunday.” She pointed to a second document. “This is their own affidavit they had advised you to seek an attorney’s opinion, and they then had you initial their affidavit acknowledging you concurred.” Terwilliger looked at Rebecca. “Do you remember any of this?”
Bewildered, Rebecca shook her head. “I just signed whatever papers they put in front of me.”
“Of course you did,” Terwilliger said, bitterness in her voice. “And you also initialed you were in full agreement with their ridiculous lowball appraisal. And here’s a good one: you specifically acknowledged to them that, if you repay the mortgage, you will reimburse Senior Equity for all of their expense involved with originating the instrument, as well as a hefty termination fee.”
“I did?” Rebecca asked.
Terwilliger nodded. “That’s how they do it. They just start putting sheets of paper in front of you and telling you to sign.” She gave a wry smile as she held up another sheet. “This one says you have three days to change your mind about the mortgage. I’ll bet they never explained that one to you.”
Rebecca shook her head. No, they had not.
“And then you signed this one,” Terwilliger said, holding the sheet in the air. “It says you acknowledge they explained all of the other forms to you, and you understood each of them.”
“I had no idea,” Rebecca said softly.
“Of course you didn’t,” Terwilliger replied. “That’s the whole idea. And then ‘Margaret’ comes along and says you ought to do something to violate the terms of the mortgage. That way, their money is tied up for maybe two years, after which they have an asset worth at least twice what they paid you.”
“What can Rebecca do?” Alice asked.
Terwilliger was silent for a moment. “Legally, almost nothing. Senior Equity has the law on their side. This file is papered with proof they followed the letter of the law and you agreed with everything they did. It’s only when you throw in ‘Margaret’ and the fact they just happened to be performing a ‘routine title search’ after Rebecca’s husband’s death that it all begins to smell like what it is: a scam.”
Terwilliger began placing the papers into a folder. “I’m just a suburban attorney,” she said. “I do cut-and-dried wills and probate, divorces, separation agreements, and whatever else comes across the transom. I get idiot kids out of jams those kids would never have gotten into except their parents were too busy to notice. I’m here because Paula is one of the few people in this town for whom I will drop everything to be of help.”
Terwilliger placed the last sheet into the folder. “We can file an injunction. We can ask for a stay of the foreclosure while you seek the highest price for your house. But that isn’t going to solve the underlying problem these people have their claws into you for almost $90,000 more than you received from them, or it was their underhanded tactics that caused you to violate the loan.”
“You are going to need a shark to get out of this,” Terwilliger continued. “These people are slick and they’ve already thought about the angles, which tells me they’ve been doing this for a while. They’ll play a delaying game that can last for years, and time is never on the side of the elderly. You should also lodge a complaint with the state Attorney General’s office and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They’re supposed to be a consumer advocate and look at things like this. But I suspect they’re only interested in big fish. Beating Senior Equity would take too much time and energy.”
Terwilliger rose from the chair and slipped on her jacket. “As much as I hate to say it, with people like this, hiring an attorney might be throwing good money after bad. There has to be some kind of a back-door solution.” She gestured to the room around her. “I created the ‘GCG Trust’ last year at Paula’s request. The trust exists for one reason: to own this exceptionally nice townhouse condominium you live in. I didn’t ask Paula where all that money came from. It isn’t my business and, as an officer of the court, there are things about which I’m much better off not knowing.”
“But I know wherever that money came from, it went to good use. I’m going to suggest to Paula she put on her thinking cap and get creative.” With those final words, Diane Terwilliger shook hands with Rebecca and Alice, collected her briefcase, and said her goodbyes.