My Father Lived In My House Rent-free For 9 Years, Then Changed The Locks To Kick Me Out. I Evicted Him And Accidentally Bought His Only Backup Home. Am I The Jerk For Leaving Him Homeless?
The Second Break-In
3 days after closing I get a ping from the security system I’d installed cameras to keep tabs on the contractors doing the renovations. I check the live feed from my office expecting drywall guys or electricians. Nope.
I’m watching my 55-year-old father full-on crawling through a broken window like a bargain bin cat burglar. Not subtle, not smart, just desperate. He’s inside wandering around like he owns the place, opening drawers, checking closets, pacing like he’s planning where the couch will go.
Meanwhile, I’m sitting there watching it unfold on my phone wondering if I should be angry or just impressed at the sheer delusion. I don’t know what he was thinking but he was literally breaking into property I owned while he was already facing criminal charges for the last time he messed with my property. Some people really never learn.
I called the police immediately but part of me felt sick about it. How had we gotten to this point? When the cops found dad inside and he tried to explain that this is my family’s house and my son bought it for me, I could see them trying not to laugh.
The officers asked for documentation proving he lived there or had permission to be there. Dad had nothing. No job, no money, no plan.
And when the cops told him the house he just broke into was legally mine, you could practically hear his brain rebooting in real time. He froze. Just stood there like someone had yanked the cord out of his mental wall socket.
This wasn’t some misunderstanding. He’d already pulled the illegal lock change stunt a couple months earlier. So when they booked him this time the judge took one look at the file and said:
“Nope no bail. Two stunts in 2 months.”
That was enough for the court to decide he was either too reckless to be trusted or just straight up dangerous. Maybe both.
Uncovering Derek’s Troubles
While he sat in county waiting for his next hearing I finally had the breathing room to look into something that had been bugging me since the whole Derek situation. The rushed sale, the panicked phone call, the zero explanation. It didn’t sit right.
So I started digging, made a few quiet calls, reached out to people who ran in Derek’s orbit—old business contacts, mutual acquaintances from the local investor scene. Took a bit of time but I finally pieced it together. Turns out Uncle Derek had been in way over his head.
He’d borrowed big, like six-figure big, from a couple of shady business partners for some real estate flip that flopped hard. Not just a bad deal, full-on financial face plant. The kind that leaves scorched earth behind.
And when the cash dried up and he couldn’t pay back the loans, these guys didn’t just send polite emails. They came knocking. Legal threats, pressure to liquidate assets, real heat.
Uncle Derek being the coward he is obviously panicked. Instead of owning his mess he started quietly offloading everything he could. Selling off furniture, draining his investment accounts, even liquidating personal stuff all under the radar.
It was like watching someone set their own life on fire just so the flames wouldn’t touch anyone else’s. And yeah, you can imagine how proud I am of my uncle and dad and my offer on the house; that was his escape pod. He just needed one last lump sum to disappear.
And I guess I was the lucky buyer who showed up right on cue. Wouldn’t be surprised if the guy had his bags packed the morning we closed. Look, I actually felt a little used.
No one likes being a chess piece, but let’s be real, I still walked away with the property for 40% under market value. I wasn’t exactly crying myself to sleep. Derek might have pulled a fast one but he only needed to sell because he tanked his own life.
That part wasn’t on me. And just to be clear I didn’t lie for him. I may have casually mentioned to a few mutuals what direction he seemed to be heading when he left town.
If you’re going to burn your bridges with business partners and then try to ghost your way out of it, don’t expect family to help hide the smoke. That’s not how I operate.
The Truth About Becca
After that I figured I’d seen the last of the drama for a while. Just wanted to focus on stabilizing the new property, tightening up leases, getting back to business. But life doesn’t work like that.
It never just hands you one mess at a time. While I was still juggling the legal cleanup from dad’s stunt and Derek’s house, the past came crawling out from a totally different direction and hit harder than I expected. During dad’s court proceedings I finally got the truth about Becca from an unexpected source.
Carmen approached me outside the courthouse looking like absolute hell. So desperate.
“Please,”
she said grabbing my arm with shaky hands.
“Can we talk? There’s stuff you don’t know about Becca.”
We sat in my car while Carmen fell apart completely. Turns out the whole custody battle story was complete fiction. Becca didn’t have any kids to fight for.
She’d lost custody of her one daughter years ago for neglect and substance abuse issues. The court case wasn’t about getting custody back. It was about the state trying to permanently terminate her parental rights.
Becca was fighting to keep even supervised visitation, not to get her daughter back. Carmen had made up the entire sob story to manipulate me into giving Becca free housing. They figured if I thought some poor mother was fighting to reunite with her children I’d be more likely to help out.
Classic emotional manipulation using fake kids as props. The betrayal cut deep. Not just that they’d lied, but that they’d used the idea of a mother losing her children to manipulate me.
That’s some sociopathic level scheming right there.
“Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?”
I asked Carmen.
“Maybe I would have helped if you’d been honest.”
Carmen just stared at her hands. Would you have, really? Honestly probably not, but at least I would have respected them for being straight with me instead of playing games.
Carmen begged me to let them move into one of my rental properties once dad gets out of jail. She promised they’d pay rent this time, be model tenants, and never cause problems again. I told her all my units had paying tenants with signed leases, which was a lie.
She asked if I could help them financially with a deposit somewhere else. I walked away without saying another word.
Family Backlash
Word of dad’s legal troubles spread through the family like wildfire. Suddenly I’m getting calls from relatives I barely knew, all with strong opinions about how I’d destroyed the family and abandoned my father in his time of need. And there’s Aunt Susan, who I hadn’t talked to since I was 12, called to lecture me about forgiveness and Christian values.
“Family forgives, honey. This is what Satan wants. Families torn apart by pride and money.”
Uncle Mike, dad’s cousin, wanted to know if I was really going to let family end up homeless over some silly property dispute. Like 9 years of free housing was just a silly misunderstanding. Every single conversation followed the same script.
I was the bad guy for enforcing boundaries. Dad was the victim of circumstances and I should fix everything by giving him money or housing. The manipulation was so obvious it was insulting.
Not one of these people offered to help dad themselves. Not one opened their own homes or checkbooks. They just wanted me to sacrifice my property and income to solve a problem dad had created.
“Why don’t you let him stay with you?”
I asked Uncle Mike.
“Well we don’t have the space.”
“I see. So I should house him for free but you can’t because you don’t have space. Got it.”
