Friday, August 1, 2008

wife and mother versus house

I heard about this story a couple days ago from a radio show that I listen to. A woman was having her house foreclosed on, and hours before the house was going up for auction, the woman killed herself in the home. She faxed a letter to her mortgage company that by the time they took her house, she would be dead, and the mortgage company alerted the police, who went to the home and found her body.

I don't get it.

She left a suicide note to her husband and son that said they should take the insurance money to pay for the house. So, she thought that her husband and son would rather have the house than a wife and mother? That being able to keep the house would make up for losing her, at her own hand yet? Maybe it's just me, but I would be furious if my spouse or mother did such a thing. It's not a noble act. I know it's not nice to speak poorly of the dead, especially when it's a total stranger, but I see her suicide as cowardly. She now no longer has to deal with any of the problems, and she can portray herself as the giving wife and mother who couldn't bear to continue letting her husband and son suffering and sacrificed herself for them. But all I see is the husband and son, who have to live the rest of their lives knowing what she did. Given that the auction was to happen in a few hours, I'm not sure the insurance money would have helped anyway. But even if they had managed to keep the house because of the insurance money, how would you feel living in a house where your wife or mother killed herself, and the only reason you're still in that house is *because* she killed herself? Would you really still want to live in that house? Would you not be angry that she thought you'd rather have the house than her still alive and in your life?

There are other parts of the story that I find disturbing, like the husband having filed bankruptcy three years in a row. I don't really understand that part of the article, probably because I don't really understand bankruptcy, but it sounds like he filed all those years, but his petitions were denied, so he never was actually in bankruptcy. In any case, he was obviously in financial trouble - wouldn't he have thought to see how the rest of the marital assets were doing? His wife hadn't paid the mortgage in almost four years, and he had no idea? (Also, I didn't know banks would let you go that long without paying your mortgage before taking your house. Sounds incredibly generous to me.) He was so oblivious to something that big that was going on, because he apparently couldn't be bothered to pay attention?

It's a sad story, but I'm not feeling as sympathetic as people might expect because there were all kinds of choices being made that didn't need to be made. And most of what I'm focussing on is how this all is going to affect the son.

4 comments:

Jen said...

Have to agree with you on this. I can't grasp the "my house is more important than I am" scenario - but more than likely she was suffering from a mental illness that made her "solution" seem logical (to her).

Anonymous said...

I feel sorry for the family in this. TO feel that desperate. It's terrible. Oh and in regards to bankruptcy, people file chapter 13 all the time to postpone foreclosure. It's one of the many ways that loopholes have been exploited. The knowledge I have on how to stop a foreclosure is staggering. Must use powers for good though, right/?

Sherry said...

She went about it all wrong, anyway, if she's thinking that the life insurance is going to take care of it. Life insurance does not cover suicide, and she outright wrote down her plan, so there would be no doubt as to the nature of the death.

Or was she referring to another form of insurance?

Or some kind of crazy life insurance policy that ensures purposefully killing oneself?

I'm sure that she had some kind of mental problem. That poor family.

Cindy said...

I was wondering if there was some kind of medical issue with the mom, but the article had not even a hint of that, though there's definitely more information I'd like in general. I think my viewpoint came from objecting to the way the story was told, almost like she was a hero for what she did in sacrificing herself and isn't the current foreclosure/housing crisis a shame viewpoint that I keep hearing about without ever any mention made that the people involved might have some fault attributed to them in what happened.

As for the bankruptcy filing, the husband couldn't have been doing that to save the house because he says he had NO IDEA that the wife hadn't paid the mortgage in over 3 years.

And I wondered about the suicide/insurance thing, but then I heard that there are some policies where suicide doesn't preclude a payment as long as a certain time has lapsed since the policy was taken out, but I don't know if that's true.