In Marci Maynard’s mind, every cloud has a silver lining, but you have to persevere to find it.
Maynard’s mother, Marilyn Humason, purchased a house in Powell in May of 2016 with the intention giving her grandchildren a place to live.
Maynard said her mother lived in Arizona and before she could rewrite her will reflecting her intentions of leaving the house to her grandchildren, she passed away in August of last year after battling bone cancer.
“She was doing okay,” Maynard said. “She just suddenly passed away.”
Maynard is a business development professional with a faith-based, non-profit company. She said she’s a divorced single mother with four children, receiving no alimony or child support, and has shared custody of the children with her former husband.
“I don’t make a lot of money,” she said.
She said her mother wrote her will in June of 2015, but the week of the funeral Maynard learned that all of her mother’s assets were to be sold and the proceeds put into a trust for the grandchildren’s education from her mother’s attorney.
“My oldest doesn’t go to college for another five years,” she said. “Essentially what they’re doing is selling the kids’ home and saying, ‘Guess what, we sold your home. Here’s a bunch of cash that you can’t have until you’re 21 years old.’”
Maynard said her fight began in December when Security National of Springfield, Ohio, executors of her mother’s will, gave her notice that the house was to be put on the market in January. She hired an attorney and fought to keep her mother’s house for her children’s sake as long as her finances allowed.
“Everyone wanted more,” she said. “I don’t have more.”
Maynard said the bank filed for an eviction hearing Aug. 3. She realized she wasn’t going to keep her mother’s house. She had to look for a new place to live and move.
“When I was dealing with the bank in June and July, it was stressful,” she said. “I kept my faith.”
Maynard found a house just down the road from her mother’s house.
“We were the very first to see the house. The owner said, ‘I really like you, I really want to rent the house to you, but I’ve got 30 people who want to see this house,’” Maynard said. “He had that much interest in the house.”
Cue the silver lining.
Maynard signed the lease last week and started moving things into the new house Friday. She said many of her new neighbors offered to help her to make the move.
“Many of the neighbors have been there for a really long time and are really awesome,” she said. “I’ve been really blessed.”
