Daughter sues Wells Fargo over mother’s signature – fourteen years late
The court noted a telling detail: while the husband’s signature “is executed in a strong cursive,” his wife’s “is merely an odd scribble.”
The wife died in 2009. The husband lived until 2017. Neither challenged the deed of trust during their lifetimes.
In 2019, their daughter – acting as administratrix of her father’s estate – obtained an order halting foreclosure on the home, though that injunction was later lifted. She filed suit in 2022, claiming her mother lacked mental capacity to sign the deed of trust, had been under a conservatorship, and could not have validly entered the agreement. The amended complaint asserted a single cause of action for “fraud and bad faith.”
Wells Fargo moved to dismiss, arguing fraud claims carry a three-year deadline in Mississippi – making a 2022 lawsuit over a 2008 deed nearly fourteen years too late. The daughter countered she had no reason to suspect the problem until she “discovered” her mother’s signature in 2019.
The trial court dismissed the case. On appeal, Judge McCarty, writing for a unanimous panel, agreed but corrected the legal framework. Under Mississippi Supreme Court precedent in Lott v. Saulters, claims like these – even when pleaded as fraud – are actions to recover land, governed by a ten-year statute of limitations.
