She told me the property was named in a foreclosure filing scheduled for the ninth. I asked her why my son would need the orchard cleared before a court date, and she said the filing listed him as the owner of the entire property. The lender was preparing to take the land because a loan he’d taken out two years earlier had gone unpaid. My daughter-in-law had apparently discovered the problem only after receiving a letter from the court. She said my son had told her the orchard was worth enough to cover everything if they could sell it quickly. Then she said something that made my hands go cold: my name was mentioned in the filing too.
The next morning I went to the courthouse and requested the documents myself. The loan application claimed that I had transferred my interest in the orchard to my son in 2021. I had never signed such a document. The signature attached to the transfer looked like mine, but the notary stamp belonged to someone who had never witnessed me sign anything. My attorney later discovered that the document had been filed only three days after my husband’s old estate records were requested. Someone had apparently found a copy of my signature and used it to create a transfer that never happened. The sauna wasn’t a gift at all—it was part of a plan to make the property look improved before the lender took possession.
I confronted my son with the filing, and for once he didn’t argue. He admitted he had forged the transfer because he believed the orchard would eventually become his anyway. He said he thought the loan would be repaid before I ever discovered it. My attorney challenged the fraudulent deed, and the court removed my property from the foreclosure proceeding. The loan remained my son’s responsibility, and the contractor never returned to touch another tree. He had told his wife the sauna was a gift to me, but the truth was that he was trying to destroy the orchard before a judge could discover he had never owned it.
