Countdown to eviction

From: icBirmingham, UK - 16 Jan 2003

Jan 16 2003

By Jane Tyler, Evening Mail

An 80-year-old disabled woman is just a week away from being evicted from her family home - by her daughter.

A bitter family feud means Beatrice Coleman will have to leave the Pype Hayes house where she has lived for 50 years by January 22.

The widow, who is blind in one eye, deaf, and can only walk with a frame, is hoping for an eleventh-hour reprieve and has applied to the courts to get the move overturned.

Mrs Coleman's daughter Gillian McKinney was granted the eviction order by Birmingham County Court last year.

The two women jointly own the three-bedroomed semi after buying it in 1993 for £14,000 under the council's right-to-buy scheme.

But they fell out two years ago and afterwards Mrs McKinney discovered her mother had changed the tenancy agreement.

It means when Mrs Coleman dies the house will not automatically pass to her daughter, but will be given to whoever she bequeaths it to in her will.

Mrs McKinney said she obtained the eviction order because she wants to sell the house, now worth £84,000, and use her share to buy a home for her and her three children.

But Mrs Coleman, who also suffers from renal failure and chronic arthritis, denies changing the tenancy agreement and claims her daughter sparked the rift.

Her friend, Reg Baldwin, said she is too frail to fight the eviction and he is doing it on her behalf.

"She was originally due to be evicted last November but we managed to get the courts to delay that," he said. "But this latest eviction order takes effect on January 22 so my only hope is to go back to courts and get an application to have the order overturned.

"She's a frail sick old lady who is being turfed out of her family home by her daughter."

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