I thought that making the arrangements with the Credit Union would put an end to my brother's ability to control Mom's finances. It wasn't long before I found out how wrong I was. He was still absolutely furious with me for encouraging her to do what she did. He intended to make me very sorry for that. It wasn't long before he was intercepting me on the way to the mailbox and demanding that I hand over the bills. When I refused, he grabbed hold of the envelopes and pried my fingers off of them. He sorted through them on his way back to the house with me hot on his heels.
"We're not paying this, this, this, and this" he announced. "The hell we're not!" I argued. "We can wait on a couple of those" Mom said. "No we cannot!" I shot back. "I've been working too damn hard to get you back on your feet to let him screw things up for you again now!" My arguments were in vain. I had to resort to writing my checks a couple of days early and handing them off to Dad to be mailed from his house. On the occasions that he was not available to do that, I had to sneak out of the house and walk halfway across town to mail them from the post office. It was at this point in time Mom realized that she needed to get her property taxes paid before the house was sold right out from under her. Without consulting anyone, she decided to get a Home Equity Loan.
An assessor from Fairbanks Capital Corporation came over to the house to do an appraisal. He could tell that the house needed a lot of work. When he was finished, he walked over to me and looked me right in the eye. "You're ruining your mother's house!" he spat in disgust. He turned on his heel and walked away. I was stunned. "I haven't lived in this house for three years!" I snapped. "You've got some nerve making an assumption like that!" A family friend took Mom and I down to Chicago to sign the forms for the loan. She excused herself to use the restroom. As soon as she was gone, the guy with the papers looks at me and says "How did she get so far behind on her property taxes?" "You'll have to ask her" I replied. "She's the one who didn't pay them."
Mom wound up getting a $43,000 loan, nearly three times more than she actually needed. Worse yet, it had a variable interest rate. Even though the company knew she was living on retirement income alone, they did not advise her against it. They also refused to change the due date of the loan despite the fact that her fixed income would not be available until the third Wednesday of every month. Between the required house insurance, the wildly fluctuating interest and the late fees, they ensured that her loan would never be pared down. Nine years later, despite making monthly payments, she owes about $47,000.
A representative from Catholic Charities defined their actions as Elder Abuse. Unfortunately, Fairbanks Capital Corporation was a large financial institution, and Catholic Charities had just made the decision to only intervene when smaller, private lenders were involved. In other words, we were screwed. After the bills were paid, the remaining money was supposed to be used to fix up the house. Instead, Mom gave some money to Dad for his bills, then spent the rest without putting one dime of it where it was needed most. Once again, my brother had a lot to do with that. Despite the constant opposition from him, I persevered in making sure the bills got paid every single month.
It deeply disturbed me that my brother had absolutely no remorse for nearly bringing our mother to financial ruin. His philosophy is since he didn't ask to be born, she owes him. After all, it is her fault that he's here. He didn't ask for any of this, so why shouldn't she support him? Not only did she pay for his beer and cigarettes, he used her money to buy drugs. He had the top of the line packages for the cable and the phone. He had two newspapers delivered to the house. He would tell her he borrowed money from other people to help us out and make her give him money to pay them back (I'm certain that he exaggerated the amounts in his favor on more than one occasion). In other words, he was living the life of Riley until I moved back home and put a stop to it for our mother's sake. He really hated me for that...and it showed in so many ways.
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