WASHINGTON, D.C.: After his wife died, Leon Stutzman moved to a retirement community. The contract for his apartment required a hefty entrance fee, with the written provision that if he died or moved away, most of the deposit would be returned to his heirs within 90 days of the unit’s resale.
Stutzman passed away in August 2011, but it took the village managers more than three years to find a buyer.
“I kept calling the marketing man, and he said he would put me on a list of people to get back to, but I would never hear from him,” recalled his eldest daughter. “I felt like we were getting the run-around.”
The unit was finally sold and the family was repaid this spring with no interest. During the intervening years, the daughter knew, the stock market soared, and if village management invested it there, she said, “they made a lot of money”.
But lawmakers are now looking at the case…