reverse mortgage and other woes

a diary of my mother's stubborn resistance to accept help

Photo by Nebular on Unsplash

13 June 2025:

If you’ve been following The Right to Folly, a diary of my struggles to help my recalcitrant mother, you will know that I’ve been trying to sell her home.

🎉 Ellen’s home has sold! 🎉

Such a tremendous and heartbreaking relief. Ellen was very proud of her home, the sunny bedroom, the EZ Lift bed that tilted up so she could watch Anderson Cooper and baseball, the large back deck, the overflowing flowerpots we filled on my visits, the Liquid Amber tree for which she wrote a poem:

this morning mounds of gold
carpet my deck. The liquid
amber sheds daily, leaf by leaf
gently floating

Her home was Ellen’s last tie to independence, to the dotage she’d imagined for herself. She fiercely wanted to stay, but her health and her financials made it impossible. She had no resources to pay for care in her home. Why? Well, many reasons, but really, she absolutely screwed herself by choosing the false promise of freedom offered by a reverse mortgage.

At sixty-nine Ellen was tired of working, and let’s be real, who isn’t? She decided to take a reverse mortgage on her home which meant she would only be responsible for maintenance, taxes, and insurance. The mortgage principal would be subtracted every month from her home equity. We begged her not to sign the papers. We sent our financial adviser to her home and when he pushed back on her impending choice, she kicked him to the curb with a few harsh words. For 16 years, month by month, liquid amber leaf by leaf, she chipped away at her reserves.

Please note that Ellen is not well poised for retirement. Please note, that for most Americans who can afford to buy a home, it becomes the keystone of their retirement plan. The reverse mortgage was a live-in-the-moment plan, not a retirement plan. Ellen was a fan of Be Here Now by Ram Dass. I remember the book stacked with Rolling Stone and Ms. Magazine on our makeshift coffee table (a power line spool from PG&E, such a 70s hippie phenomenon!). For Ellen, Be Here Now may have started her on a spiritual journey that included Richard Hittleman’s 28 Day Yoga Exercise Plan:

Erhard Seminar Training, and finally Soka Gakkai Buddhism. For years Ellen chanted, “Nam-myoho-renge-kyo,” an expression of determination, a pledge to oneself to never yield to difficulties and to win over one’s suffering. (She certainly, momentarily, took her financial suffering off her plate with the reverse mortgage!) The chant is also a vow to help others achieve happiness. I know Ellen felt great solace and connection in her buddhist community.

I believe Ellen grabbed a lot of immediate happiness in her life. Yet currently, not a ton of immediate happiness. Being here back then has made now suck.

When her house sold this month she owed the bank roughly 850,000. Yes, that many zeroes. She will owe the government in the vicinity of 90,000 in capital gains taxes. Yes, that many zeroes. As you may deduce that leaves her with very little in reserve. I don’t want to do math here, but know that every month she has a shortfall paying for her Assisted Living and her health insurance. This keeps me awake in the night.

Be Here Now? Yes. Here I am, now, scrambling, trying to figure out how she can stay at her comfortable assisted living. How she can stay near her friends. How she can live in a private room.

…

In the sunshine on my back porch, my phone hot in my hand, I asked —no begged— Ellen to please quit calling her bank.

Do. Not. Call. Your. Bank.

She thinks she has bills to pay. She is trying to be conscientious. I admire her. She screams at me the list of bills that she indeed did need to pay in the past. But they are all gone. She has triple paid PG&E. She wants to pay for cable, but she has no account. Same with property taxes. I am afraid she will make an irreversible error that will leave her with even less money. She keeps ordering new debit cards. Each time she orders a new card it cancels her old debit card. Which means I have to keep changing the payment details at Amazon pharmacy to keep her medications coming. Is it a huge deal? No, but it chips away at my reserves.

It feels as if Ellen has taken a reverse mortgage on me.

Her bank will not cut her off. They don’t recognize the PoA which they call ‘dusty.’ They asked me to draw up a new one. But/and, aside from the cost that would incur, I have 3 capacity declarations from doctors which state that she is not competent to make fiduciary decisions so how could we draw a new PoA? It would be DoA. These are the riptides in which I am caught.

…

On the phone I carefully described to her the financial predicament. “I want to keep you where you are for as long as possible. I want you to be comfortable and safe. I am trying my very best to keep you there until the money runs out.”

“Or till I die?” she fiercely said. She was challenging me. She wanted me to say, “No, oh mom, no. You’ll be around for a long time.” Or else she wanted me to confess that the sooner she dies the easier things will be. But I don’t feel either of those things.

Honestly, I just feel numb in the silence hanging between us. It doesn’t feel good to answer, and I don’t like myself when I say it, but I answer, “Yes. Until the money runs out or you die.”

…