Paying three hundred thousand dollars of debt before being ordered out of the house
Evelyn adjusted her pearls, her fingers tightening around the middle strand. “Clare, dear, this is a family matter. Surely there is no need for this kind of hostility. We are talking about Marcus’s livelihood.”
“We are talking about fraud, Evelyn,” David Vance said, placing another document on the table.
It was a certified copy of the quitclaim deed for the Elmwood Avenue house.
“This deed,” David said, pointing to the signature line, “transferred the title of the Elmwood property to the Evelyn Webb Family Trust in October. Marcus signed it. Evelyn, as trustee, accepted it.”
Marcus leaned forward, his hands flat on the table again. “We did that to protect the house from the creditors. It was a standard asset protection strategy. You knew we had to keep the house safe.”
“I knew no such thing,” I said. “You did not protect the house from the creditors. You protected it from me. You allowed me to spend eighty thousand dollars of my personal savings, and then fifty thousand dollars of my personal credit line, to pay down the mortgage and the business liens, all while knowing you had already transferred the title to your mother’s trust.”
