TLDR:

Due to unforeseen circumstances and improper planning for the future, and many, many deaths, two cousins, one of which is a bedridden quadriplegic, and their 8 cats, with the caregiver and their dog, will lose their home and might end up on the streets. Please help. An auction date has been set for May 30 which gives us two weeks to raise the $65,000 that Pennymac wants to reinstate our mortgage. Otherwise we have to enter into a good faith listing of our home on the market with a realtor. Once we do that we would have to buy the house outright for the $375,000 that we would owe for the whole mortgage. I have an attorney working on the probate side of things in which I had to leverage my father’s guitar(the Gretsch guitar he had since he was 8yo) in order to pay. However, the Probate Attorney cannot do anything about the mortgage lender’s demands.

To whom it may concern,

My name is Rachael Horowitz, and I am a 39-year-old quadriplegic. I live in my deceased grandfather's home with my caregiver and my cousin Golda. My grandfather passed away in February 2022, and my grandma had already passed away in August 2011. I lost both of my parents in 2015 and 2016.

My aunt became the executor of the estate and successor in interest on our mortgage. My grandpa left a will and named beneficiaries in it. They were my aunt Kathy, my uncle Andrew, my father, and my cousin Katherine. My aunt and uncle were both willing to sign over their part of the inheritance to us so that we could keep the house. 

I did not have the money to pay for the mortgage when my grandpa passed away because it was just my cousin and me living here, and we did not make enough to pay the mortgage until my caregiver moved in and paid rent. This also allowed my cousin Golda to get more clients since she is a caregiver and makes more money. However, we ran into $31,000 worth of back mortgage payments and interest that we had to pay in order to stay in our home.

Luckily, I was able to procure a loan to pay back what we owed.

My grandpa actually told them many times over the years that he wanted my cousin and me to stay in the house after he passed away since we didn’t have family to rely on like the rest of the beneficiaries. We were the only ones that never got married or had children to help them out. My grandfather was never able to record his wishes in a will or a trust because he ran into health problems before it happened.

Once we paid back the mortgage, we were good in paying every month on the mortgage and utilities until recently.

My aunt, who had become executor of the estate and successor in interest, ended up passing away in late 2023. Since then, I have tried to become successor in interest with the mortgage without success. They wanted documentation to show that I had an invested interest in the house as a beneficiary. I sent them my grandfather’s will. I sent them my grandfather’s death certificate. I sent them my father’s death certificate. I sent them my birth certificate and my identification. I sent them a copy of the deed with both my grandfather’s and my father’s name on it.

However, I did not have my dad’s birth certificate until recently, and that was the only thing they needed supposedly to show lineage. I had to prove to them that I was my grandfather’s granddaughter and my father’s daughter and that I had an interest in the estate. I tried getting my dad’s birth certificate from New York but was denied three times, with them saying that there was no reason that I needed the birth certificate.

I even asked if we could go to New York and pick it up from the Department of Health, in which I was told that upstate New York has its own Department of Health I would need to go to since that’s where my dad was born. However, I learned that they don’t have an open office and it is closed indefinitely.

The only thing I was able to do was make payments on the mortgage for the estate of Max Horowitz, and I wasn’t allowed to become successor in interest or talk about anything else. They would provide me no answers until I got that paperwork to them. I finally got ahold of somebody in June of last year after I found my dad’s birth certificate, and they told me that they had been trying to reach out to me through email to let me know that the mortgage rate had risen by almost $200 in late 2023.

They were not emailing me, though. They were emailing my aunt Kathy, who had passed away, and were letting her know that the mortgage payment had gone up by $198 since it was needed for the increase in escrow. Also, they had neglected to get enough money to pay taxes, so we owed an extra $1,800 toward the taxes. Altogether, we owe them $25,000 that we didn’t know we had to pay. If we don’t come up with this money, they will be auctioning off our home in the next 14 days, and the debt services paperwork says that they only have to give us $30,000 for our house.

The same house, that on Zillow is worth $850,000 (even though it is becoming dilapidated and needs $100,000’s to upgrade it) and we only owe $300,000 on. This is the home that my cousin and I grew up in, and that I would love to raise my own family in. It’s full of memories and love, and since we’re all each other has left, staying in our home keeps us connected to our deceased family members.

Also, it is the only way that I can afford to live in a home that offers me mobility at its price point. Thank you for reading my story. I will keep you informed of any progress and put up more pictures and videos in the coming days.

Update: I’m being told that even with my dad’s birth certificate, and even though I proved lineage, that I can’t become the successor in interest because I need something showing an ownership interest. My dad’s ownership interest is not enough because his estate has never been probated, even though he had no property to divvy up or living beneficiaries (besides me).