By Cathy R. Holmes, a concerned citizen
I am writing to share my story about what I feel is the unfair treatment of myself and my husband in the Madison County judicial system based on our economic status, such as my ability to pay for court and lawyer fees, legal research, and court documents prep assistance. My conclusion is that no matter how much proof of wrongdoing you have, the courts will not give you a fighting chance if you can’t afford to pay for competent assistance.
Here is my story.
On March 27th, 2017, my husband and I sought to purchase a piece of the American dream in the form of our first home at 4900 Alberta Rd. Huntsville, AL 35816, for $130,000 from the former property owner, Mr. Dwayne Montgomery.
We did not go through a realtor and paid a $15,000 down payment. The agreement was for us to pay $700.00 per month until the balance of $115,000 was reached. However, the payments were soon increased to $1000. In April 2021, the house was reappraised at $185,000, so Mr. Montgomery raised the purchase price. My husband and I began to feel as if Mr. Montgomery began to have second thoughts about selling the property and wanted to do something else that would give him a more significant profit than selling the property outright. This is when the big issue began. Shortly after the new appraisal, we were informed by the title company and Amber Earl Leading Edge Real Estate that there may be an issue with the deed. Our names were currently on the deed, and the exact reason this was an issue needed to be clearly explained to us. Being first-time home buyers, we could only follow the instructions we were told would “fix” the problem: remove our names from the deed, put Mr. Montgomery’s name back on the deed, and establish a rental agreement.
So, in January 2022, we signed a quick claim and began renting the property we were trying to buy. While we were working to resolve these issues, Mr. Montgomery said he had yet to receive or only partial payment for several months. It took some time working with the bank to find and resolve this issue. But by March 2022, Mr. Montgomery had begun eviction proceedings, so we needed legal assistance to fight this in court.
My husband and I are both on disability, so we did not have a large amount of income to dedicate to obtaining legal assistance. We sought help from many attorneys but could not afford the average fee of $400.00 an hour, so we entered the court battle “pro se.” We were not allowed to appear in court to present our story, receipts, texts, and affidavits from Mr. Montgomery, our land sale contract, the lenders we worked with, and bank statements to fight the eviction. We weren’t granted a bench trial, received a writ of execution, and were allowed by the court to pay $2300 to stay in the house until May 2022 before being evicted.
We have since brought a civil claim of wrongful eviction, also ‘pro se,’ but the court dismissed the action. In my eyes, the entire eviction process was riddled with ill will. I truly believe that if we had the necessary funding to pay a lawyer like Mr. Montgomery or, at the very least, had someone who specializes in legal research evidence gathering, who would have been familiar with the civil process, who could have helped with document prep and organization assistance, I would have been taken more seriously by the court and would have felt like the points and evidence I tried to present were given fair consideration.
Ultimately, I felt unheard by the court, mistreated by Mr. Montgomery, and sad that our first attempt to own a home ended badly.
I ask the community to write Speakin’ Out News about any resources or information that I can use to help my husband and I fight against this injustice.
Cathy R. Holmes
Huntsville, Alabama