Part II: My mom died

Ovarian cancer is a tough disease, and my mom succumbed to it in September 2007. Joel came to the memorial, and spoke fondly of meeting with her, dancing at the yacht club, and mom's various foibles.

He'd made a payment to her, and, for a month or two after her death, made the payments to my brother and me. I spoke to him around then. He explained that the contract had been structured the way it was because he was going to pay the boat off soon.

Then he dropped out of sight. I got a few payments from him, but then they stopped. I called him a few times, but he would either not respond or, if he happened to pick up the phone, would say he was busy and that he'd call me back.

Them out of the blue, I got this in the mail:

Basically, it said he didn't want to buy the boat any more. That he was having a hard time finding a berth for it, and that he had been expecting some money from his mother's estate.

I felt a little bit blindsided by all of this, but at that point it was just another crazy element of dealing with my mother's estate. I mean, in one sense it wasn't my problem--he'd agreed to buy the boat, and it didn't seem right for him just to say, I don't want it any more.

But he was a friend of my mom's. I talked to him and said fine, I would come out, find a place for the boat, and that would be that.

Part I: The original contract.

My mom kept the family house in Phoenix, but spent a lot of time on a big ol' boat at a marina south of San Diego. The marina was a great place, where she made a lot of nice friends. It was a great crowd of people who shared a love of boats and a warm and winning joi de vivre.

Mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2006. She kept up a brave and happy face, but it was apparent over the next year she was failing. In the summer of 2007 Joel agreed to buy the boat from her. A few weeks later, she left the marina for Phoenix for the last time.

Here's the contract they wrote up and signed:


Basically, it says he was buying the boat for $60,000, payable $1000 per month. There's a 5 percent late fee for each late payment, and an interest rate of ten percent per year.