Monee Woman Evicts Her 100-Year-Old Aunt

She has 13 days to get off her farm

A Monee woman seems to be asking for some bad karma.  What else could be expected by evicting a 100-year-old woman – oh yeah - who's also your aunt?

Bridget Gruzdis, 47, is kicking her 100-year-old Aunt Agnes Albinger off the 70-acre farm she’s lived in since 1949.  Per the eviction notice Albinger received Wednesday, she has fewer than two weeks to pack up and move out reports the Chicago Tribune.

It’s a complicated mess about nine years in the making, according to the Tribune.  It started in 2001 when Albinger began to little by little hand over part of the land to a company called Phoenix Horizon LLC – which happens to be owned by Gruzdis.  Together, aunt and niece borrowed $700,000 in a series of mortgages in an attempt to save the land.

Albinger says she doesn't remember signing off on the mortgages, and police are investigating her claim.

The property was set for foreclosure last September, but the bank that owned the contract, Peotone Bank, was taken over by the FDIC. The paperwork shuffled between three financial institutions and finally ended in the hands of First Midwest Bank who halted foreclosure proceedings and vowed to do everything they could to keep Albinger in the home. 

A few public officials, like Sen. Dick Durbin and Attorney General Lisa Madigan, also have come to the centarian's defense. 

"We're going to take every necessary step to make sure Mrs. Albinger can stay on her property," said Charles Pelkie, a spokesman for the Will County state's attorney's office, who is working with the aforementioned politicians, told the paper.

Gruzdis hasn’t commented about the eviction.  The only explanation for kicking her aunt off the property came in a letter attached to the eviction notice she sent to Monee police on Wednesday.  In it she says she doesn’t have the money to "maintain the property or to provide for the occupants."

Gruzdis did tell the Tribune that she and her aunt were going to develop that land.  She also said the 100-year-old was suffering from dementia.  Other family don’t agree with that diagnosis.

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