Support Urgently Needed for Disabled Senior's Move

I am a 70-year-old woman who has been legally disabled since January 5, 2009. This was the legal recognition date of the myalgic encephalomyelitis, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome which I had suffered from increasingly as an adult.

In 2019, after more than 20 years of celibacy, I found myself mind-bogglingly in love with a distant family member I had known most of my life: Ken, a man who seemed too good to be true in every way, especially since he was in love with me. We enjoyed more than two years of a daily long-distance relationship with several visits. Then I moved to be closer to him on September 29, 2021, from Columbia, MD, where I had lived for 22 years, to Wheaton, IL outside of Chicago. He gave me a condo to live in, putting my name on the deed with his. I paid tax, HOA fees, and a certain amount to him that he promised to keep for me as forced savings, the total equaling what I had been paying in my rent-stabilized apartment. It was a great deal, and I felt so cherished and secure.

But then he revealed his true colors. They were unpleasant at first, then scary. I broke up with him in August 2022 when I realized how harmful he was for me, but he wasn't having it. As far as he was concerned, he owned me. I kept trying to find a way to get along with him, but he was determined to see me out of "his" condo. I thought I was secure in it, but before he had even offered me a financially feasible way to live here, he had consulted with a lawyer, so he knew that despite my name on the deed, he could file for a partition of the property and thus force the condo to go to sale. And so he has done.

In January 2024, a predictable sewage backup took place in this condo as it regularly has since my guy bought it in 2010. Ken never disclosed to me that multiple sewage backups have taken place in our condo with no mitigation, and that they would happen again first and worst in this condo that sits over the sewage line exit from the building. I got extremely sick and had to move to a hotel with my two cats, where I became very depressed, hopeless, and isolated.

It was at this chaotic moment of my enervating flight to the hotel that Ken got his lawyer to file a lawsuit in three parts, suing me for tons of money on specious grounds, and also filing for partition. I have attended Zoom court every month and have submitted documents to the court trying to get my point of view entered into the record, but his wily lawyer has always found reasons to strike my statements from the record. I tried to get lawyers, legal help, financial help, spiritual help, you name it. I gave up and tried to do it myself; then in utter despair, tried again to get money for a lawyer. I also tried in vain to get the HOA insurance to pick up the last part of the reconstruction in the condo after my home insurance maxed out. The property manager was supposed to secure this, but she didn't. I lived in the hotel for eight months, six of which were taken up by the property manager not doing her job. I suspect she was bribed.

Ken's first lawyer left the firm, and the second lawyer promised me that he would make sure to resolve the issues with getting insurance to pay for the repairs to increase the price of the condo for sale. How naive could I be?! What he did was make sure my home insurance promptly stopped paying for the hotel as well as the storage of my belongings, something that had been done in preparation for replacing the floors. I had to move back into the deconstructed condo with my stuff. I am leaving things packed because I want to leave as soon as possible, leaning on leasing agents in low-income senior buildings back in Columbia, MD and surrounding areas in Howard County. Each application is time-consuming, and keeping in touch with the agents while putting in more applications and at the same time dealing with the slew of legal documents that keep coming my way has been more than I can handle. One hidden blessing is that whereas the hotel kept exposing me to pesticides, new carpeting, and mold, all of which increased my symptoms of fatigue and brain fog, my October 21st return to the remediated condo, its toxic mold mitigated, is allowing my brain to function somewhat better, massive stress notwithstanding.

Now Ken and his lawyer have invented a story to make my departure urgent. On the 6th, we are meeting before the judge to see if she agrees that I must completely vacate the premises on the 8th. I am terrified. I am shocked. That is so little time, and I have nowhere to go. My whole life has been churned around again and again, with the purpose of destroying me as best he can - as he had promised to do - while he has suffered absolutely nothing but a private affront to his ego.

Help me survive this, friends! I need at least $5000 to move from Wheaton back to Howard County. I also need a safe apartment. Does anyone have any leads? Please give generously so I can take myself out of this entirely toxic situation. Please help me survive the machinations of this horrible man.

Update: the judge ruled that it is my condo too, so I can stay in it until the day of closing, if necessary. She mildly denied my ex and his lawyer's demands that I suffer endless complications and losses. They have been bullying me since then and will continue, I imagine. But I feel elated. She has not been taken in by their games.

Also, I have received preliminary approval for a fourth-floor apartment - such a relief after living these last three years on the ground floor. I am still waiting (as of Tuesday, November 26th) for the higher level approval. Since higher level approval is where I lost my last apartment attempt, I feel some anxiety.

Regardless of where I end up, I still need at least $1000 more than the almost $3000 raised here so far in order to pay for the move itself, even though I am giving away lots of furniture and smaller stuff too.