My Son Gave My Gulf Shores Villa To His In Laws Until A Retired Judge’s Plan Stopped Them
Vivien Ivers is my name. Three weeks ago, my sixty-seven-year-old son informed me that I was not wanted in the home I had constructed myself.
The call was placed on a Tuesday afternoon at 4:17 according to the microwave’s clock. Derek’s voice sounded casual and carefree, like a man placing a sandwich order at a deli counter.
“Mom, Megan’s parents will now reside at the villa. They own it. It’s generally best if you have your belongings out by Friday.
Friday. As if I were leaving a hotel.
My son and all of them were unaware that I had spent six years getting ready for that phone call. I didn’t want to.
Because around eleven thirty at night, a retired family court judge sat across from me at a kitchen table and informed me that I would have to.
I must tell you about three summers, a porch swing, and a promise I made to a deceased man before I tell you about the Saturday morning the Proctors arrived in their leased U-Haul.
I discovered a listing at the back of the Mobile Press-Register twenty years ago. Cottage with two bedrooms in Gulf Shores, Alabama. Eighty-five thousand bucks.
The pictures revealed a bathroom with enough mold to be eligible for a science fair project, a decaying porch, and water spots blossoming across every ceiling.
Raccoons in the attic were brought up by the real estate agent in the same manner as a finished basement.
At Mobile General, I worked as a pediatric nurse pulling doubles. 62,000 annually before taxes.
It had been six years since I became a widow. Derek was eighteen, nearing the end of his senior year, and headed to Auburn.
On a Saturday, I traveled down in a 212,000-mile Honda Civic. I saw something no one else could see as I stood in that overgrown yard with sand spurs getting through my sneakers.
There are four bedrooms. A wraparound porch. And around six o’clock in the evening, the Gulf of Mexico turned gold.
I paid cash for it. Arthur’s life insurance payout plus all of my savings. I hadn’t touched the $120,000 in six years since doing so would have required me to acknowledge that dad was truly dead.
The cashier’s cheque was double-counted by the bank teller.
“Mrs. “Ivers,” she remarked. “Are you certain?”
I informed her that, aside from getting married to Arthur, I had never been more certain of anything.
I avoid purchasing anything that I am unable to fully pay for. I learned that from Arthur on a Sunday afternoon in 1989 while we were sitting at a table with an open checkbook.
I hauled a camp chair onto the porch that first weekend. I had to place the chair over a joist to prevent it from going through because the boards sagged so much.
As the sun dipped into the water, turning everything the color of a struck match, I sipped a thermos of coffee.
When Arthur and I retired, we used to discuss erecting a porch swing. We never did since he passed away at age 43.
That first summer, I constructed it myself.
White oak. Marine varnish in three coats. Salt air is rated for brass hardware. It still doesn’t creak twenty years later.
That first morning, I saved the coffee mug. I won’t replace it because it is on the kitchen windowsill and has a chip in the handle.
Three summers. It need that.
The first summer was in 2006. After four years of banking, I took a three-week vacation and arrived with a case of bottled water and a crowbar.
I started by tearing out the porch. All the rotten boards, even the joists.
On the second morning, Tommy Guidry, my neighbor, stopped by with his tool belt.
He works as a contractor. has been for thirty years. “Vivien, you swing a hammer like a woman with something to prove,” he remarked as he stood at the bottom of the steps and observed what I had done.
In order to excuse myself, I told him I was a woman with a mortgage, which was untrue. All I could see before me were the money, the mansion, and the years.
Tommy assisted me with the roof and the foundation. The frame was done by me. I completed the drywall.
I completed the rough-in myself after taking a weekend electrical course at the community college in Foley.
Because I am obstinate but not foolish, I paid a certified electrician forty bucks an hour to come examine every inch of it.
That summer’s materials cost forty-one thousand dollars. Each receipt is kept in a binder.
Second summer of 2007. interior design.
Tommy acquired salvaged cypress at a salvage yard outside of Pensacola, and I used it to construct the kitchen cabinets.
Enough wood to furnish a professional kitchen for three hundred bucks. That cypress, which had been sitting on the bottom of a river since before my grandma was born, had been removed.
With a ruptured rotator cuff that I kept a secret from everyone, including my doctor, I spent six days laying the bathroom tile on my hands and knees.
For that house, I went with three colors. For the living room, seafoam. For the master bedroom, coral. For the kitchen, driftwood.
While eating a gas station sandwich in the parking lot of the Gulf Shores hardware shop, I grabbed them off a fan deck.
The original paint cans are still in my garage. For fifteen years, they have been vacant. Nevertheless, I retained them.
Third summer of 2008. the completion.
The swing increased. The landscaping was installed. Because Arthur’s mother planted gardenias and he like the scent of them in June, they were placed along the back fence.
By then, the cottage had grown into a villa with four bedrooms.
Over the course of three years, the entire refurbishment will cost $247,000. Each and every receipt is filed. Each permit is recorded. Every single one has my name on it.
The county valued it at $340,000 by the time I was done.
However, I did not retain the receipts for that reason.
I wanted the paper to accord with what my hands had created, so I kept them.
I’ll tell you about Arthur.
Arthur Ivers worked for Gulf Regional Builders as a construction foreman.
He constructed churches, strip malls, and an enduring middle school in Saraland. His voice could coax a dog out of a thunderstorm, and his hands resembled baseball gloves.
I am six feet two. Derek only inherited his height.
Arthur was forty-three in the spring of 2000. Derek was twelve years old.
On a Sunday night, we were relaxing on the porch of our Mobile rental. Wearing his reading glasses, he went through the accounts like he did on the first Sunday of each month.
He put down the papers. He removed the glasses.
“Viv, make me a promise. Never place the house in someone else’s name if something were to happen to me. Not even Derek’s. Not until you’re prepared.
When property is involved, people change. even those you care about.
I gave him a sidelong glance. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Because I’ve seen it on every job site where I’ve ever worked.” He placed his hand on my knee and said, “The family fights over the truck after the foreman dies.” “Make me a promise.”
I made a commitment.
Arthur never attended a university. With a diploma on the wall, he had a deeper understanding of human nature than anyone I have ever encountered.
On August 14, 2000, three months later, he fell forty-two feet from scaffolding at a business location on Mobile’s east side.
Before the ambulance arrived, he had already left.
When the school secretary knocked on the door and asked for Derek by name, he was in Mrs. Keller’s arithmetic class in the sixth grade.
For twenty-six years, I fulfilled that pledge.
I once came dangerously close to breaking it. I’ll address that.
You must first comprehend how my boy grew into a guy capable of making that phone call on a Tuesday afternoon without even losing his place in the conversation.
I took the necessary action after Arthur passed away.
Weeks of sixty hours. Evenings. doubles. holidays. Every weekend that Mobile General’s NICU offered, I took advantage of the paid time and a half.
With a twelve-year-old who need braces and a mortgage, I was making ends meet on the wages of a pediatric nurse.
But I was just vanishing from Derek’s point of view.
Most nights, he ate supper by himself. I put plates with notes on top in the fridge.
Give it three minutes of heat. Mom, I love you.
Remember to bring your math folder.
He stopped reading them at the age of fourteen, I discovered later. When I was organizing his desk years later, I discovered a pile of them in the back of a drawer. not opened. Still folded.
That stack of notes has been on my mind more than nearly anything else in my life.
Derek received an invitation to Sunday supper from a boy called Tyler Proctor when he was sixteen.
There was not a single empty chair at the eight-seat table that Tyler’s parents, Ray and Donna, had. In the backyard, Ray prepared hamburgers.
Donna created her own peach cobbler. The food was consistently hot and abundant, and they were both welcoming and boisterous.
The following Sunday, Derek returned. And the following.
By the time he finished high school, he was referring to Ray as “Pop” and Donna as “Mama D.”
At his graduation celebration, which the Proctors threw at their home, I learned that.
I had no idea that I was loosing my son to the dining table of another family. He wasn’t seated at the table, and I was too preoccupied to keep the lights on.
Megan and Derek met during a cookout hosted by the Proctor family. She was the younger sister of Tyler.
When he was twenty-two, they got married.
The wedding was paid for by me. Twenty-eight thousand bucks. Two hundred people, mostly Proctors, with an open bar and a live band.
I assumed that since we were paying for the wedding, everything would be OK. I assumed that being present was equivalent to writing that check.
I now realize that I was purchasing tranquility.
The duration of the tranquility was comparable to that of the centerpieces.
Ivers, Megan Proctor. 36 years old. full-time strategist and part-time dental hygienist.
From the county clerk’s office and a paper trail she believed she had buried, this is what I pieced together later.
Ray Proctor’s plumbing company failed in 2020. His business contracts were taken overnight by COVID.
Restaurant buildouts, office structures, everything. In October, he filed Chapter 7. The Fairhope home was lost.
The most admirable thing I know about Donna is that she sobbed for two days in a row before beginning to load boxes.
They relocated to a duplex they rented off of Highway 59. There are two bedrooms and wall mildew.
Ray was sixty years old, sitting in a recliner with nothing to do and a hole in his gut caused by forty years of pride.
Megan informed Derek that evening, “I am going to fix this,” after witnessing her father bring things inside the duplex.
She also conducted her own study. I’ll give it to her.
She discovered that my villa was valued at $780,000.
She searched for quitclaim deeds. She discovered that Derek could grant tenancy to anyone he pleased if he were on the deed.
The forms were printed by her. The pitch was written by her.
“Explain to your mom that it’s for estate planning. Inform her that if she becomes ill, it will safeguard the property. She will sign anything on your behalf.
Derek paused. That’s the painful part. He paused.
“She’ll be angry.”
“Your mother has two properties,” Megan added. She is able to reside at her apartment. My parents don’t have anything. Who is more in need of it?”
She was meticulous about nearly everything.
She simply overlooked the final step.
My son did the same.
Derek traveled down to the villa six years ago on a Thursday in March, carrying a manila envelope and carnations from the grocery store.
I should have learned everything from the flowers. Since Mother’s Day in 2014, he has not bought me any flowers.
On the porch, we sat. I’ll give him this: he nearly made his pitch seem plausible. He had it prepared.
“For estate planning, mom. I must be on the deed if something were to happen to you in order to avoid going through probate. Margaret would say the same thing.
I paused. In the back of my mind, I could hear Arthur’s voice as clearly as a Sunday church bell.
Never transfer ownership of the residence to another else.
Derek then leaned forward and said the one thing he knew I couldn’t ignore.
“Mom, Dad would have preferred that I have security.” Do you not desire that for me?”
I put my signature.
He took the document and departed. After the carnations perished on the counter, I threw them away, cleaned the vase, and returned it to the cabinet.
I had trouble falling asleep that night. I felt nauseous in a manner I hadn’t felt since the August 2000 phone call as I lay there listening to the water stream in and watching the ceiling fan turn.
I gave Doris Palmer a ring at eleven-thirty.
For thirty years, Doris, a former family court judge, has been my best friend. She has seen hundreds of families split apart over property, and her questioning style eschews every courteous step.
Has he filed it yet?”
“I’m not sure.”
“First thing in the morning, check the county recorder. Vivien, too. Pay attention to me. Yesterday, you established a revocable living trust.
The following morning, I checked.
The deed was never filed.
Derek had brought it home and stored it in a drawer in the kitchen. He didn’t follow through. He believed that signing equated to completion.
This story revolves around that assumption, which he formed because he had never in his life had to do a task on his own.
Margaret Holloway obtained a revocable living trust for the villa in less than two weeks.
I am the sole trustee.
I am the only beneficiary.
My son’s kitchen drawer had a quitclaim deed that was worth less than the paper it was printed on.
I didn’t tell him.
I secretly wished I would never have to.
Like a loaded revolver in a locked drawer, that trust was kept in a safe-deposit box at First Gulf Bank for six years. Every year, I prayed that I would never have to open it.
That Tuesday, three weeks ago, at four in the afternoon, I was reading a Patricia Cornwell book on the porch swing. The Gulf was level.
About fifty yards away, Pelicans were dive-bombing. Sweating sweet tea down the armrest, I had nowhere to go.
And my phone buzzed.
He didn’t get comfortable with it. Derek has never been very good at preamble.
“Mom, we need to talk about the villa. Megan’s parents lost their lease. They need a place. The villa’s sitting there most of the year anyway. We’ve decided they’re going to live there.”
I set my book down face-up so I wouldn’t lose my page.
“You’ve decided.”
“It’s the right thing to do, Mom. You’ve got your apartment in Mobile. You don’t need two places.”
“Derek. This house was made by me.
There was silence for two seconds. Perhaps three.
The words “I am going to carry to my grave” were the next thing he spoke.
“Mom, it’s now theirs. You are no longer welcome here. I apologize, but that is the reality.
I put the sweet tea down. I gazed at the lake.
It was moving slowly and leisurely, as if it had all the time in the world and had no interest in what any of us were doing, like it does in the evening, changing from blue to copper.
I considered working twelve-hour shifts for thirty-four years. I considered placing tile on my knees so that my shoulder would not rise above my head.
And I imagined a man wearing reading glasses asking, “Promise me,” on a Mobile rental porch.
“Okay, my love,” I replied. “I comprehend.”
I ended the call.
I didn’t weep. I want that documented, not because I think crying is bad, but rather because I didn’t have any. Instead, something else had shown up; it was steady and chilly, and I recognized it from every code I had ever run in the unit.
I went inside and gave Margaret Holloway a call.
I then created a list.
Ray Proctor visited his new kingdom two weeks later.
So yet, no U-Haul. He parked his battered Silverado with the broken taillight in my driveway as if he had been doing it for years.
I was present. I had informed Derek that I needed to gather some personal belongings.
In reality, I was documenting.
Like a buyer visiting an open house who has already submitted an offer, Ray strolled through the house. He unlocked every cabinet in the kitchen.
With a grunt, he tested my plumbing by turning each faucet handle as if he were being kind to me.
He nodded to himself as he stood in the master bedroom, gazing out at the Gulf.
He then stepped out onto the porch.
He then took a seat in the swing.
Arthur’s swing. In the summer of 2008, I sanded every joint flush by hand using white oak, marine varnish, and brass hardware.
He placed his boots on my railing, opened a Bud Light, and put Donna on speaker.
You will adore it, honey. Four bedrooms, wraparound porch, and view of the beach. We’ve struck gold.
Jackpot. similar to a scratch-off ticket.
With my phone’s camera open and the timestamp enabled, I stood in the kitchen doorway.
I took pictures of each room. He had opened every cabinet. My porch boards have boot impressions on them.
Eventually, he saw me and waved the beer can at me, dismissing me like a landlord.
“Vivien, don’t bother about the dishes. Donna is bringing a set of her own.
I gave him a smile.
After taking one more photo, I drove back to Mobile with thirty-seven photos in a folder marked with the year and the month.
The following day, Donna showed up with a Pinterest board she had printed out at the Fairhope library, fabric swatches, and a tape measure.
She took measurements of the windows in the master bedroom. The living room was measured by her.
She opened each closet and used a pen with a fake daisy on the end to take notes in a spiral notebook.
She then entered the garage.
The three paint cans were located by her.
seafoam. coral. Driftwood.
She didn’t realize that I was standing in the hallway six feet from the garage door when she took out her phone to contact her daughter and put it on speaker.
“These hues are really out of style. Gray comes to mind. A pleasant, pleasant shade of gray. And the curtains smell like an old woman, honey. Everything will need to be replaced.
They have an elderly woman’s scent.
I remained silent as I stood in the hallway.
I walked into the garage after she left, took up the seafoam can, and held it in both hands. It was nearly weightless. For fifteen years, it has been vacant.
I paid forty dollars for a Singer at a yard sale in Theodore, and I made the curtains myself. It was Italian linen purchased from a Birmingham store.
Sixty-eight dollars a yard, and I recall standing in that shop for twenty minutes doing the arithmetic in my head before I said yes.
They do not smell like elderly lady.
They smell like salt air and twenty years of open windows and the gardenias I planted along the back fence for a man who has been deceased since Derek was in the sixth grade.
But I didn’t say that.
I set the can back down and I started taking shots.
Ray discovered me sitting on the front stairs that night.
“Vivien, you spent your years here,” he remarked. “Now it’s our turn.”
I committed every word to memory.
Not because I’m a petty person. Because on the evenings when I would unavoidably ponder, I wanted to recall precisely why I was going to do what I was about to do.
That weekend, Megan drove down with a file folder and the visage of a woman who had practiced the exchange in front of a mirror.
I was seated at my own kitchen table by her. In the same summer that I completed the cabinets, I constructed one out of reclaimed cypress.
For two days, I sanded that table until the grain was smooth enough to run silk over.
The folder was opened by her.
“I want to make sure that everyone is in agreement, Vivien. Six years ago, Derek was placed on the deed. This place is necessary for my folks. For one person, your Mobile apartment is ideal.
Her hands were folded. She had done a good job coaching herself.
“This is the right thing for the family, even though I know it’s difficult.”
Which family is it appropriate for, Megan?”
She didn’t blink.
“The family most in need.”
She then moved a sheet of paper across the table.
A copy. Not the first one.
Behind my son’s head, carnations from the grocery store wilted in a vase, and there was a photocopy of the quitclaim deed I had signed there six years prior.
I examined it. I could identify my own handwriting.
And I had knowledge that Megan did not.
It was a ghostly paper. It was never captured on tape. It was never filed. It had no legal significance at all. It was an ineffective photocopy of a document.
“I see,” I replied. “I’m happy that we can communicate with each other.”
Like a woman who had just closed on a house, she picked up her folder and went outside to her car.
She believed she was demonstrating my cage’s latch to me.
She was displaying a napkin to me.
I took a car the following morning to Tommy Guidry’s workshop on Gulf Shores’ east side.
Tommy has spent twenty-six years working in the store. A filing cabinet that weighs more than his truck and a calendar from 2003 are still hanging on the wall.
When I entered, he was repainting a cabinet. His beard was covered in sawdust. Before I could say anything, he looked up, switched off the sander, and said it.
“I’ve heard that the Proctors are moving in. Is that accurate?”
Social media is unnecessary in small towns. They have porches.
I said, “That’s what they think.”
He put down the sander. He went to the large gray filing cabinet with four drawers in the back corner, the one with the coffee ring on top, and opened it.
Twenty years of receipts. licenses. reports on inspections. bills. Between 2006 and 2008, I purchased every nail, board, gallon of paint, and foot of wire.
Every permission has my name on it. Every inspection sign-off bears my signature.
Tommy remarked, “I kept copies of all of it.” “Every one has your name on it. Do you want a binder made for you?”
“Make two. One for Margaret and one for me.
He didn’t inquire about Margaret’s identity. Tommy is aware of when to begin gathering information and when to pose a question.
We used a carpenter’s pencil to run the numbers on his workbench.
Eighty-five thousand was the purchase price. 247 renovations. Eighty-four thousand for twenty years of property taxes at forty-two hundred each year.
Insurance at eighteen hundred thirty-six thousand a year.
A documented investment of $452,000.
That’s what I placed in that house with my hands and checkbook.
In between his lunch break and a meeting at three o’clock, my son gave it away.
I drove to First Gulf Bank on Perdido Beach Boulevard on a Wednesday morning with my driver’s license and a tiny brass key that I store in my jewelry box on a chain.
I was led back to the vault by the young woman who worked as the teller, Carrie.
I was the one who taught Carrie’s mother how to hold her without upsetting the leads when she was six days old and weighed four pounds.
Box 147 for safe deposits.
It had been two years since I had opened it.
Arthur’s death certificate, dated August 14, 2000, Baldwin County, was enclosed. June 9, 1986, was the date of our marriage license.
A picture of five-year-old Derek sitting on his father’s shoulders at the beach, both of them grinning and squinting into the sun.
The Vivien A. Ivers Revocable Living Trust is located behind everything in a transparent plastic sleeve. notarized. sealed. went on a date six years ago.
Vivien A. Ivers is the sole trustee.
Vivien A. Ivers is the only beneficiary.
1847 Gulf Shore Drive, Gulf Shores, Alabama, is the main asset.
That package included one additional item. A single-folded note written by myself.
Never put it in someone else’s name, Arthur said.
I didn’t.
Viv.
I heard him and read it. With the reading glasses in his hand, he was as clear as that Sunday on the porch.
I took the note, the trust, and the five-year-old picture of my son.
I departed from the others.
I spent eleven minutes sitting in my pickup in that parking lot. I numbered them on the dashboard clock because I always count when I’m about to do an irreversible action.
I then gave Margaret Holloway a call.
“Margaret. It’s time.
She didn’t think twice.
“I’ve been waiting for this call for six years.”
I came to a stop on Perdido Beach Boulevard. The Gulf was silver and level.
All the way home, I kept to the speed limit.
The Proctors were creating a life in my home while I was constructing a case.
Donna replaced my curtains with twelve-dollar gray polyester panels from HomeGoods that wrinkle if you look at them incorrectly.
The coral bedroom was painted over by her. Gray, agreeable, just as promised. Two thin coatings.
She shared pictures on Facebook. Our brand-new seaside house. God bless you.
Additionally, my three original paint cans were picked up on Tuesday from the curb.
That night, Helen Whitfield, my neighbor, gave me a call.
“Vivien. Your paint cans were placed on the curb by those individuals. Your cans of paint.
“Helen, I understand.”
Without consulting the HOA, Ray mounted a satellite dish on the roof. He carried a small refrigerator onto my porch, placed it next to Arthur’s swing, and filled it with beer.
Additionally, he said, “My son-in-law’s family property,” to anyone nearby who could hear him while holding a dish of brisket at the neighborhood block party. The new owners are us.
That evening, I received a call from Beth Atkinson. I’ve known Beth for eighteen years.
I adore her because she brought me a casserole every Sunday for a month after Arthur passed away and never once assured me that everything would be okay.
“Honey. Is that accurate? Ray Proctor is claiming that you gave the house to them.
“No, Beth. It is untrue. However, I’m managing it.
“Is there anything you need?”
“I need your trust.”
Yes, she did. That’s how Beth is good.
I gave them time to settle in.
I let them sit in my swing, paint my walls, and remove my drapes. I allowed them to delve deeply.
My drywall has every nail hole. All the lies they told my neighbors. Everything.
Because the descent would be more difficult the deeper they dug.
This becomes more than just a family dispute when it comes to my son’s cash.
As part of the case building process, Margaret conducted a simple financial background investigation.
Derek owed forty-seven thousand dollars on his credit card. Eleven hundred dollars a month for two automobile payments. A Daphne mortgage that was two months overdue.
In order to pay the minimum on one card, he had gotten a cash advance on another. transferring water from one sinking boat to another.
Megan makes thirty-eight thousand dollars a year. In a good year, Derek’s commission from the furniture store was fifty-two.
They were collapsing. Going slowly but steadily.
My house wasn’t given away by my son out of kindness. He determined that if Ray and Donna lived there rent-free, he would never have to justify it to anyone.
He gave it away since he could not afford to maintain it.
He wasn’t acting honorably. He was letting go of an issue that he had no right to have.
Margaret, however, discovered something worse.
Derek had been claiming to be a Gulf Shores property owner to creditors. Fourteen months prior, he had applied for a personal loan at First Coastal Credit Union, listing the property as an asset.
something he didn’t own. A never-filed deed.
Margaret placed the paper on her desk and peered at me over her spectacles.
“Vivien, that is fraud. Family drama is not what that is. That is dishonest.
With those words in the air, I sat in her office and tried to think of the boy who, at the conclusion of a double shift, would create sketches of our house with a red front door and give them to me.
That boy became an adult.
And he became corrupt at some point.
I made one more trip to the house before daybreak on the previous Thursday.
I had a spare key to the rear gate that I had concealed years ago inside the garden hose reel. No one was aware of it. Not even Derek.
5:47 a.m. It was charcoal in the sky. With the exception of a faint silver line where the moon touched it, the Gulf was entirely dark.
They had fallen asleep. Through the bedroom window, I could hear Ray snoring.
The window in my bedroom.
Along the back fence, the gardenias were in full flower. The scent of those fat white blossoms at that hour will blow your head off.
I stroked the back porch’s seafoam wall. It’s still my color. Donna was still working on it.
I took a seat in the swing.
White oak. marine-grade polish.
There was no creak. It’s too well-built for that.
For forty minutes, I saw the Gulf go from black to gray to pink to gold, as it does when it believes no one is looking and it can continue with the entire light display.
In the water, I imagined a five-year-old youngster perched on his father’s shoulders.
I imagined a pile of unopened notes in a desk drawer.
Even though I did everything correctly, it was insufficient.
However, I wasn’t doing this for that reason. I’ve had a lot of time to sit with that, so I want to be honest about it.
