Oldsters Will Have to Go: Grandson Sold the House

WESTVILLE, N.J. — A 96-year-old man and his 88-year-old wife, who say they signed their house over to their grandson with the promise they could remain until they died, will live to see that promise broken.

“They will have to move soon,” real estate agent Anthony Malave said Tuesday, confirming that the house was put on the market and sold by Richard Gray, the grandson of Reade and Edith Earl.

“When we took Rick in as a little boy and raised him, we never thought it would ever come to this,” said Earl, who with his wife has lived in the house for more than 40 years.

Several years ago, the couple signed the deed of their home over to Gray, Earl said. They received no money, agreeing to pay Gray for utilities while he paid the taxes, sewer and water bills and other expenses, he said.

“We don’t want to move,” Edith Earl said. “When we moved here, I said it would be our last move until we went to the cemetery.”

They found out in September that Gray had listed the house for sale, but a real estate agent took the property off the market when he learned the couple preferred to stay.

Gray then took the property to another real estate agency, and it has since been sold.

A neighbor said the Earls were without water and electricity for a few weeks in September, and he and another man “ran an extension cord from two houses away so they’d have some light and have their heater on.”

Earl said he was surprised when the lights went out.

“We had been paying Rick,” he said.