Unwitting Couple Purchase Property Once Used As Meth Lab; Now Face F'closure After Making 3+ Years Of House Payments On Toxic Home Used For One Week

In Prattville, Alabama, the Montgomery Advertiser reports:

• The only room in this one-story house safe enough for human inhabitation is a small, non-ventilated room with a toilet, and even that is toxic. Brenda Maitland bought the house, hidden just off Alabama 59, about four years ago. It is where she, her husband and two young daughters were going to swim, ride their new horse, plant a garden -- make a home.

• But just after a week of living there, Maitland's youngest daughter got sick: sore throat, earaches, watery eyes, burning skin. They were the same symptoms that Brenda Maitland came down with while scrubbing the house the week before the family moved in. "I thought it was the flu," she said. The people who lived there before them were heavy smokers -- so it could have been from that, the family thought.

• But they learned it was far more than that. They learned they had bought a home that the previous owners had used as a methamphetamine lab. Standing outside the home recently -- the doors are locked, and nobody is allowed inside because of the toxicity level -- Maitland talked about when she found the house on-line.(1)

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• The Maitlands wish they had found out about this before moving in. The family has since paid their mortgage every month for three and a half years as advised by their attorney. About $1,200 a month -- more than $50,000 was spent on a house they lived in for just more than a week. They stopped making the payments in July, and the house was foreclosed a few months after.

For more, see Home hazardous: Family's residence in Prattville had been used as a meth lab.

For a story on meth-lab related lawsuits, see The National Law Journal: Meth Lab Residue in Homes Triggers Litigation (Lawsuits over contaminated homes focus on failure to disclose issue).

Go here for other posts on home-based meth lab horror stories.

(1) According to the story, they took six months to find the home after moving from Texas. It had grape and blueberry bushes, a green house, a pool. Azaleas lined the front sidewalk. Dogwoods welcomed them home. Before moving in, the family spent about $10,000 on hardwood floors, new furniture, a computer, stereo equipment. But it wasn't just the family that was coming in contact with the toxins. Not only did the poisons coat the house, they also coated many of the possessions that the family brought into it. The Maitlands were advised not only to leave the house as quickly as possible but to abandon most of their furniture and clothing. "I was told to keep everything in the house," Maitland said. "When the house was put under foreclosure in December, the flooring and everything that was in the house was toxic, so that has been removed and destroyed."