The owner of the house involved with Wednesday morning’s blaze
on Ashford Circle was in a foreclosure battle with Wells Fargo over
an unpaid $1 million loan. The woman, Ottilia May Carl, had been
contesting she didn’t legally have to pay the loan
– because the money wasn’t intended for her, but for her son,
according to court documents. Carl, though, signed a deed with the
bank using her home as collateral.
The owner of the house involved with Wednesday morning’s blaze on Ashford Circle was in a foreclosure battle with Wells Fargo over an unpaid $1 million loan.
The woman, Ottilla May Carl, had been contesting she didn’t legally have to pay the loan – because the money wasn’t intended for her, but for her son, according to court documents. Carl, though, signed a deed with the bank using her home as collateral.
After two years of legal battling, the court sided with the bank. After her appeal was denied in April, Carl’s home was scheduled for an estate sale May 1.
The disagreement between the bank and Carl comes from a loan that was taken out by Carl, her son and daughter-in-law, according to court documents.
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The loan, which her son arranged to pay, was never paid in full and the bank eventually issued a foreclosure on the home, according to documents at the San Benito County Courthouse. In 2010, Carl sued the bank over what she perceived to be an unfair treatment of her and what she termed in documents as “financial elder abuse.”
Carl believed that she was taken advantage of and that the bank didn’t fully explain repercussions, according to court documents.
“The balancing test of relative harm is a no contest: on the one hand a 87-year-old widow who will be homeless and destitute should the preliminary injunction be granted versus a purely economic intent of one of the world’s largest financial institutions and more profitable businesses which posted record quarterly earnings earlier this year,” her lawyer, Ted Chavez, wrote in court documents in 2009.
Wells Fargo argued that she did know what she was signing because she had taken out other major financial loans, including a $1 million construction loan from Bank of America, according to court documents.
The loan from Bank of America was used to construct the home, according to the documents.
A San Benito County Court jury sided with the bank on Dec. 2 and Carl quickly filed a stay to save her home.
A petition for writ of supersedeas, or delay of a court judgment, was denied on April 5.
In front of her home was a sign for an estate sale May 1.
Carl was not home at the time of the 5 a.m. fire Wednesday, but did eventually show up at the house, said Jonathan Pangburn, Calfire unit information officer.
At the time of the signing with Wells Fargo, the home was valued at $2 million, according to court documents.
