My Son Took $3,000 For A Fancy Family Dinner, Then Banned Me Because I Look “Too Poor.” I Just Found Out He Forged My Signature To Mortgage My House. What Do I Do Now?

“Robert wanted to give you a way out, but you need to act.”

I stayed silent, looking at the documents, reading the numbers.

$85,000. My house mortgaged without my permission.

Years of monthly payments I had never made, but that were recorded in my name.

Everything was a lie; everything was fraud.

And my son was responsible.

“How much time do I have to decide?”

“The payments are due in three weeks. If they aren’t covered, the foreclosure process will begin automatically.”

Mr. Thompson closed the folder.

“I know it is a lot to process, but I need you to understand the gravity of the situation.”

He got up from the sofa.

He took a card from his pocket and handed it to me.

“This is my number. Call me when you are ready to talk. But don’t take too long; time is ticking.”

I walked him to the door.

He left without saying anything else.

I closed the door and stood there with the card in one hand and the documents in the other, feeling my world crumble completely.

The Final Confrontation with Michael

I walked back to the living room like a zombie.

I sat on the sofa.

I opened the documents and started reading them one by one.

Each page was worse than the last.

Loans applied for two years ago, payments never made, accrued interest, threats of foreclosure.

All in my name, all without my knowledge.

And then I saw something that chilled my blood.

In one of the documents, there was an email address, an account that was supposedly mine but that I had never created.

And there was a phone number, a number that wasn’t mine.

Michael had created a fake identity in my name.

He had forged my signature; he had used my data.

And he had done it all while looking me in the eyes and calling me Mom.

I picked up my phone with trembling hands.

I dialed Michael’s number.

It rang once, twice, three times.

Finally, he answered.

His voice sounded tired; he had probably gotten in late last night from the restaurant.

“Mom, what’s up? It’s really early.”

I didn’t know where to start; the words got stuck in my throat.

“Michael, I need you to come to my house now.”

“Now? Mom, I just fell asleep two hours ago. Can’t it wait?”

“No, it can’t wait. Come now, or I’m coming to your house.”

There was silence on the other end.

“Are you okay? You sound weird.”

“Come now.”

I hung up before he could say anything else.

I sat on the sofa looking at the documents, waiting.

Time seemed to pass slowly; every minute was an eternity.

Every second gave me more time to think, to process, to feel the rage growing inside me.

Forty minutes later, I heard the car park.

The driver’s door opened, footsteps on the path, the key turning in the lock.

Michael entered.

He was wearing a wrinkled t-shirt and sweatpants.

He looked disheveled, annoyed.

“Mom, what is so urgent that it couldn’t wait?”

I said nothing; I just handed him the documents.

He took them with a confused expression.

He started reading, and I saw his face change.

First confusion, then recognition, then panic, then calculation.

His eyes moved rapidly over the pages; his hands began to tremble slightly.

“Mom, I can explain.”

“Explain?”

My voice came out colder than I expected, firmer, stronger.

He put the documents on the table.

He ran his hands through his hair.

“It’s complicated. I was going to tell you, but I couldn’t find the right moment.”

“You couldn’t find the right moment to tell me you mortgaged my house without my permission? That you forged my signature? That you put me in debt for $85,000?”

“It’s not that simple. I needed that money for an investment, an investment that was going to make us all a lot of money. I was going to pay you. I was going to pay it all back.”

“When, Michael? When were you going to pay it back? Before or after they took my house?”

He stayed silent, looking at the floor like a child caught in a lie.

But he wasn’t a child; he was a man of almost 40 who had betrayed his own mother.

Michael remained standing in front of me, head down, speechless.

The silence between us was so heavy I could feel it pressing against my chest.

I waited.

I waited for him to say something, anything that could explain the inexplicable.

“Mom, I—”

He started but stopped.

He sat on the sofa across from me and covered his face with his hands.

“Everything got out of control. I thought I could handle it.”

“Handle it?”

My voice came out louder than I intended.

“Handle it? Michael, you forged my signature. You used my house without my permission. You put me at risk of losing everything, and you call that handling it?”

“It was a safe investment. Robert promised me. He said in six months we’d have double the money. I was going to pay you everything with interest. You were going to be better off than ever.”

“Robert is dead, Michael, and he left instructions for his lawyer to contact me because he knew what you had done. He knew it was fraud.”

Michael raised his head sharply; his eyes were red.

“Mr. Thompson came here? What did he tell you?”

“He told me the truth, something you have never done.”

I got up from the sofa and started pacing like a caged animal.

“Mr. Thompson doesn’t know anything. He just wants to cause trouble. Robert and I had an agreement, a private agreement.”

“An agreement that included using my property without my consent?”

I picked up the documents from the table.

“Here is everything. Three loans, $85,000, my signature on each one. A signature I never wrote.”

“I was going to tell you, I swear. But everything happened so fast and then things didn’t go as expected. The market crashed, the investments were lost, and when I wanted to fix it, it was already too late.”

“When, Michael? When were you going to tell me? When they came to take my house? When they left me on the street?”

“I never would have allowed that,”

He shouted, but his shout sounded desperate, not convincing.

“I would have found a way to pay it. I always find a way.”

“Like you found a way to pay me the $11,000 I lent you? Like you found a way to include me in the dinner last night that I paid for myself?”

He stayed silent; his eyes avoided mine.

“Did you think it wouldn’t hurt me, Michael? Did you think you could use me, lie to me, steal from me, and I would just accept it because I’m your mother?”

“I didn’t steal from you. I just borrowed. It’s different.”

“It’s not different. It is theft. It is fraud. It is betrayal.”

The tears began to roll down my cheeks.

“I gave you everything. Everything I had, everything I was, and you paid me back by destroying me.”

“Don’t be dramatic, Mom. No one is destroying you.”

Those words were like a slap in the face.

I wiped my tears with the back of my hand.

“You’re right. No one is destroying me because I’m not going to allow it anymore.”

I got up from the sofa.