My Son Thought I Didn’t Know He Was Stealing My House. I Transferred The Deed At 3AM…
I didn’t argue. It seemed petty to argue about bedrooms when your son’s family needed help.
The first month was fine. Marcus helped with yard work and Jennifer cooked dinners.
The kids were polite. We were a family again.
But small things started to bother me. I noticed Marcus going through the mail before I saw it.
When I asked about it, he said,
“Just making sure bills don’t slip through the cracks, Dad. You know how it is. Sometimes things get overlooked.”
I found Jennifer taking photos of the house rooms, the backyard, and the renovated kitchen Diana and I had done in 2019.
“For Instagram,”
she said brightly.
“My followers love home decor.”
Marcus started talking about the house’s value a lot.
“Dad, did you see the Morrison place sold for 1.4? This neighborhood is insane right now. You’re sitting on a gold mine.”
One evening in May, Marcus brought up the estate planning. We were in the living room and he had a folder, a thick folder.
“Dad, I was talking to a financial adviser. You don’t have a living trust, do you?”
“I have a will,”
I said.
“A will has to go through probate. It’s a mess. It takes months, sometimes years, and costs a fortune in legal fees. A living trust avoids all that.”
He opened the folder.
“I had some papers drawn up, just a basic framework. Everything would still be yours, obviously, but when the time comes, it transfers smoothly. No probate, no hassle.”
The papers looked official. There was a sticky note where I was supposed to sign.
Something in my gut clenched. Diana used to say I had good instincts about people.
“I’ll need to have my own lawyer look at this,”
I said.
Marcus’s face did something just for a second, a flicker of annoyance before the concerned son mask slipped back on.
“Of course, Dad. Absolutely. I just thought, you know, save some money. These things are expensive. But yeah, whatever makes you comfortable.”
I didn’t sign that night. The next day I called Arnold Greenspan.
Arnold had been our family lawyer for 30 years. He’d drawn up our original wills and handled the paperwork when we bought the house.
He represented us when a contractor tried to screw us over in 2008.
“Robert,”
Arnold said when I described the situation.
“Don’t sign anything without bringing it to me first. And I mean anything.”
I made an appointment for the following week, but I didn’t tell Marcus. That’s when I started paying attention, really paying attention.
I noticed Marcus had added himself to my bank account.
“Just in case, Dad. What if you’re in the hospital and someone needs to pay bills?”
He’d done it with my debit card while I was napping one afternoon. I saw the bank statement.
I noticed Jennifer going through the filing cabinet in my home office.
“Looking for the warranty on the dishwasher,”
she said.
The dishwasher was fine. I noticed conversations stopping when I entered rooms.
One night I couldn’t sleep. It was 2:00 a.m. and I went downstairs for water.
I heard voices in the kitchen. Marcus and Jennifer were speaking in those harsh whispers people use when they don’t want to be heard but they’re angry.
“We can’t wait 5 more years,”
Jennifer was saying.
“Emma needs braces. Tyler needs a tutor. Your dad could live to 90. My mother lived to 93.”
“Keep your voice down.”
That was Marcus.
“I’m just saying we need to accelerate this. The trust papers are ready if he just signs them.”
“He wants his own lawyer to look at them.”
“Then we need a different approach.”
I stood in the hallway, my heart doing things it shouldn’t do at my age.
“What kind of different approach?”
Marcus asked.
“There are ways. My friend Cheryl, her dad had dementia. She got power of attorney and said he couldn’t make decisions anymore. She got him into a facility and sold his house. Perfectly legal.”
“Dad doesn’t have dementia.”
“But does anyone know that? He’s 67. He lives alone. He forgets things. If a doctor evaluated him and found he couldn’t manage his affairs—”
“Jesus, Jen.”
“I’m not saying we do anything bad. I’m saying we protect him, protect us. This house is wasting away with him in it.”
“He doesn’t even use half the rooms. We could sell it, get him a nice assisted living place, and use the rest to set ourselves up. It’s smart planning, Marcus. It’s what responsible children do.”
I went back upstairs. I didn’t sleep.
The Silent Betrayal and the Final Judgment
The next morning I called Arnold from my car parked at the coffee shop on Hawthorne.
“I need to see you today,”
I said.
“Emergency.”
Arnold cleared his schedule. I brought him the trust papers Marcus had given me.
Arnold read them with the kind of expression doctors have when they find something wrong on an X-ray.
“Robert,”
he said slowly.
“If you sign this, you effectively transfer ownership of your house and all your assets into a trust where Marcus is the trustee. You’d have no legal claim to anything. He could sell the house tomorrow and you couldn’t stop him.”
“But it says I’m the beneficiary.”
“During your lifetime, yes. But the trustee, which is Marcus, has full discretion over distributions. Meaning he decides how much you get and when. If he decides you need to be in a nursing home, he can put you there. You’d have no say.”
I felt cold.
“That can’t be legal.”
“It’s legal if you sign willingly. That’s why these documents are dangerous in the wrong hands. Robert, I need to ask you something, and I need you to be honest. Do you feel safe in your home right now?”
I thought about those 2:00 a.m. whispers. I thought about Jennifer photographing my house and Marcus going through my mail.
I thought about the way they both watched me sometimes, like I was a problem that needed solving.
“I don’t know,”
I said.
Arnold leaned forward.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going to make sure all your assets are protected. I’m going to draw up new documents, a real living trust with you as trustee, with provisions that can’t be changed without your explicit consent and a neutral third party’s verification.”
“Second, I’m going to put you in touch with someone. His name is Frank Del Monaco. He’s a private investigator. He specializes in elder financial abuse.”
“I don’t need—”
“Robert, listen to me. What you’ve described, what’s in these papers, this is a pattern. I’ve seen it before.”
“It starts small: moving into help, taking over finances, isolating you from friends. Then it escalates. I need you to take this seriously.”
I met Frank Del Monaco 2 days later. He was in his 50s, an ex-cop, the kind of guy who looked like he’d seen everything and wasn’t impressed by any of it.
“How long have they been in your house?”
he asked.
“Two months.”
“Have they tried to limit your contact with friends? Made it difficult for you to go places?”
I thought about it. Marcus always offers to drive me places now and says I shouldn’t drive as much at my age.
He’s been funny about Bernard, my friend. He makes comments about how Bernard talks too much and tires me out.
Frank nodded like I’d confirmed something.
“Classic isolation. What about your finances? Do they know how much you have?”
“I never discuss specifics, but Marcus has been asking about pension, about savings, about the house value.”
“And the house? You own it outright?”
“Paid it off in 2012.”
Frank pulled out a legal pad.
“Here’s what I think is happening. They’re building a case for diminished capacity. The talk about you forgetting things, the suggestion you need oversight, the power of attorney play.”
“If they can get a doctor to say you’re not competent, they can take control even if you’re perfectly fine.”
“How do we stop it?”
“We document everything. I’m going to install some small cameras in your house. Audio recording is legal in Oregon as long as one party consents, and that’s you.”
“We’re going to record their conversations when you’re not around. We’re going to establish a pattern. Then, when we have enough, we go to adult protective services and possibly the police.”
“The police?”
“Financial exploitation of an elderly person is a crime in Oregon, Robert. If they’re attempting to defraud you of your property, that’s a felony.”
I sat there in Frank’s office and I thought about Marcus as a little boy. I thought about Marcus learning to ride a bike and Marcus at his high school graduation.
I thought about Marcus crying at his mother’s funeral.
“Are you sure?”
I asked.
“Maybe I’m overreacting. Maybe they’re just stressed about money.”
Frank’s expression softened.
“Mr. Chen, I know this is hard. But in my experience, people don’t draw up fraudulent trust documents because they’re stressed. They do it because they’ve made a decision about what’s more important: their parent or their financial situation. I’m sorry, but you need to protect yourself.”
We installed three small cameras over the next week. One was in the kitchen, one in the living room, and one in the hallway outside my bedroom.
