When Joseph Murek paid off his daughter’s $125,000 mortgage he thought it was a good arrangement for both of them. A few months later, and after he had invested another $75,000 toward construction of an addition to his daughter’s and son-in-law’s home, he moved in and figured he had a place to live for the rest of his life. Two years later his daughter had filed an eviction proceeding, and the father and daughter were in court arguing about the terms of their arrangement.

Things started to wrong in mid-2003, with a series of arguments between Mr. Murek and his daughter, Monika Gassaway. After one heated discussion, Mr. Murek called the state Adult Protective Services office, claiming that he was being exploited by his daughter and son-in-law. An APS investigator interviewed both Mr. Murek and Ms. Gassaaway, and that apparently angered the Gassaways enough to demand that Mr. Murek move out of their home within sixty days.

After moving out, Mr. Murek sued his daughter and son-in-law. He argued that the payments he had made had been intended to secure him a place to live for the rest of his life, and he claimed that the Gassaways had committed elder abuse, had acted fraudulently, had intentionally inflicted emotional distress, and had breached their contract with him (among other arguments). The Gassaways, in turn, insisted that the payments Mr. Murek had made were gifts, and that they had not agreed that he could live with them as either an express or implied basis for his investments in their home.

After a trial, the judge decided that the father and daughter had never really reached an agreement about Mr. Murek’s right to stay in the Gassaways’ home, but that equitable principles required that they repay the money he had given them. Because he had lived with them for just over two years, the judge credited the Gassaways with $28,000 as the fair rental value, and entered judgment totaling $172,688.35 in favor of Mr. Murek and against his daughter and son-in-law.

The California Court of Appeals affirmed the trial judge’s award. Although the Gassaways insisted that the judge had improperly found a contract and a rescission of that contract, the appellate court ruled that the trial judge had actually based his judgment on the need to put the parties back into roughly the same position that they had occupied before they had entered into the relationship in the first place. Murek v. Gassaway, February 27, 2006.

Mr. Murek, incidentally, died before the lawsuit was resolved, and his estate ended up completing the litigation against his daughter. His story is yet another illustration that even (perhaps especially) family members need to clearly document their intentions when money is involved.

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