Wife Abused POA, Scoring $60K Loan Secured By Formerly Mortgage-Free Marital Home While Unwitting 74-Year Old Disabled-Vet Hubby Was Laid Up In Nursing Home; Leaves Him Facing Foreclosure

In Louisville, Kentucky, The Courier-Journal reports:

• Pierced by shrapnel 46 years ago in Vietnam, 74-year-old Cleveland Graham is paralyzed from the waist down.
  
  After breaking his neck a second time in a 2001 wheelchair accident, his hands are gnarled, he is scarred by bed sores, and he must relieve himself through a catheter and colostomy bag.
  
  Using his veteran's benefits, Graham paid off his modest home in the Ken Carla subdivision near Prospect decades ago. But now, New York-based Citigroup, which last year made $7.3 billion in profits, is trying to take it away from him.
  
  In a move his lawyer describes as "obscene," Citigroup's mortgage unit has sued to foreclose on his house — despite a judge's findings that $80,000 in debt and interest was run up against it by his ex-wife, who spent it "lavishly solely for her own benefit."
  
  Delores Graham took out a loan against the property while her husband was in a nursing home, found Family Court Judge Deborah Deweese, then spent it so "frivolously" — including to rent a car for more than a year — that the judge ruled last month that she "shall be solely responsible" for the CitiMortgage line of credit.
  
  Citi, which has assets of $1.7 trillion and 200 million accounts in more than 160 countries, is unmoved by Cleveland "Cleve" Graham's plight.
  
  Through its lawyer, Shannon Egan of Fort Mitchell, it says the Family Court ruling in the Grahams' divorce is irrelevant. Delores had a valid power of attorney when she took out the loan against the house, Egan says in court papers. Neither Graham nor his ex-wife has made a payment for three years.
  
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  In an interview at his home, Graham, who struggles to speak because swelling in his spine presses on his voice box, said he never knew his ex-wife took out the loan — and never saw any of the money.
  
  "If I knew about it, it would be a different story," said Graham, a Central High School graduate who grew up at 34th Street and Southern Avenue.
  
  Cleveland M. Graham Sr. and Delores A. Brandon Graham were first married in 1970, later divorced, then remarried in 2004, when she moved from Ohio back to Louisville to care for him.
  
  In and out of hospitals and nursing homes, Graham gave Delores power of attorney over his affairs, and in April 2007, she used it to take out a $60,000 loan against his home.
  
  Graham said he never knew about the loan; Delores said he did — and that she did her best over the years to tend to him, according to court papers.
  
  But Deweese found that her spending over the years "suggests otherwise" and that some of her testimony "runs contrary to the weight of the evidence."
  
  For example, while she claimed she used some of the money to retrofit the house, VA records show the agency paid for the modifications, Deweese said.
  
  Delores Graham couldn't be reached for comment. She doesn't have a listed number at her home in Crestwood and her former lawyer, Jim Williamson, no longer represents her.
  
  She admitted in court that that she gave some of the loan proceeds to her family members, and Deweese found she spent it "far more frivolously than she should have," including to rent a car from Enterprise for more than a year.

For more, see Bank wants to foreclose on disabled vet.