Mother's suit says daughter ousted her from Maine cabin

PORTLAND, Maine -- A disabled 65-year-old woman and her daughter are embroiled in a lawsuit over who owns the family cabin in Bethel that the mother says is hers.

Nancy Kimball is challenging her daughter, Christina, in Oxford County Superior Court seeking possession of the small cabin. The mother says her late husband intended the cabin to be hers, but that her daughter forced her from the home and into a ceramics studio on the property that has no kitchen or bathtub.

''She was supposed to make sure I had a place to live. She was not supposed to evict me," the mother said.

Through her lawyer, Christina Kimball denied that she has done anything wrong and asserted that her mother has no legal basis to take back the house.

The court has not made a decision, but a judge took control of the house until the matter is resolved.

Nancy and Dale Kimball lived most of their married life in Atlanta. When he retired in 1999, they moved to a cabin across the road from his boyhood home in Bethel.

In May 2002, Dale Kimball learned that he had terminal cancer. Concerned for his wife, who is disabled with rheumatoid arthritis, he transferred ownership of the cabin to a joint tenancy with Christina, who still lived in Georgia, with the understanding that Christina would move to Maine when her father died and live in the house with her mother, Nancy Kimball said.

After Dale Kimball's death on Jan. 13, 2003, Christina Kimball and her boyfriend, Steve Goss, came to live with Nancy Kimball. But, according to a court affidavit filed by Nancy Kimball, Christina Kimball and Goss did not find jobs after they moved to Maine, and in July 2004, Nancy Kimball found that her bank accounts that had $70,000 were nearly empty.

In September, Nancy Kimball said she suffered a stroke, after which her daughter forced her to move into a studio on the property.