Massachusetts Man Fights To Keep Home Lost In Alleged Unwitting Title Transfer

In Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Herald reports:

• A disabled Navy veteran who’d hoped to save his Dorchester triple-decker from foreclosure has launched a legal battle accusing the man who now owns the house of duping him out of it, according to court records and interviews. But the purchaser, David A. Ouellette, 28, of South Boston, says far from deceiving the plaintiff, 60-year-old Calvin L. Morris, he helped Morris get out from under a money-losing property and cleared the vet’s debts in a fair deal.

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• Calvin Morris said he ended up homeless after signing documents he says he thought would pave the way for him to pocket $475,000 to $525,000 from his triple-decker’s sale. “It’s devastating,” said Morris, who bought the home at 124 Selden St. with his brother, Primas, 68, in 1971. “This has really taken a lot out of me. Things were promised to me that did not happen.”

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• Between May 23, 2006, and June 18, 2007, Calvin Morris signed 13 documents that put the real-estate sale in motion, placed 124 Selden St. into the proposed trust and eventually relinquished his interest in that trust to Ouellette. “Ouellette, in the mountain of paperwork, also tucked in another document that Mr. Morris signed within three seconds of the trust document which transferred the beneficial interest in 124 Selden St. to himself,” Morris’ attorneys, Linda G. Champion and Douglas T. Babcock, alleged in a May 12 memorandum filed in Massachusetts Land Court, where the case is before Judge Alexander H. Sands.

For more, see 1 house plus 2 owners equals big mess. foreclosure rescue