January 31, 2010
Readers may remember the Luke Puckett story from back in fall of 2007. Chattooga County attorney Arch Farrar played a significant role in the real estate deed search gone bad, which resulted, one way or another, in the death of outsider Luke Puckett. In fact, Arch Farrar’s brother-in-law, Rome, Georgia attorney and close friend of convicted Criminal Enterprise Head/drug Dealer/Money Lauderer Mario Armas, Bill Byington, helped bail Arch Farrar out of trouble.
Bill Byington represented the Title Insurance Company’s and Mrs. Puckett’s bad title claim against his brother-in-law, Arch Farrar, without disclosing to Mrs. Puckett that he was, in fact, the brother-in-law of the attorney who had caused all of hers and her late husband’s real estate woes. (See November 27, 2007 article: Chattoga County Dixie Mafia:Chapter 4 - Luke Puckett, “Assisted Suicide” ).
Well, Arch Farrar has been up to more activities which deserve scrutiny, in the family affairs of Butch and Bob Eleam.
Janet and Bob Eleam got in touch with me several months ago, and after relating their story over the phone, came to Rome to meet with me, and lay out the documents in the paper trail which defines a sad litany of manipulation of Bob’s parents by another sibling, which borders on ELDER ABUSE, all with the aid and legal counsel and filing of paperwork by Arch Farrar.
Almost ten years ago, Janet and Bob Eleam noticed that Bob’s mother, Martha Wilson Eleam, was starting to get confused. A doctor’s evaluation diagnosed her condition as Alzheimer’s. She was okay most days, but as her husband’s health declined after a fractured hip, Marth Eleam also continued to decline.
Bob and Janet, who were living in the Eleam family farm home, began to care for Bob’s aging parents. They rarely could go to the farm house where they lived, and put off building their own home for several years, as both worked long hours at their respective jobs, and caring for their parents was in itself, a full time job.
Janet Eleam, Woodrow Wilson Eleam and Martha Eleam’s daughter-in-law, was their primary caregiver, which included personal hygiene and house cleaning for the aging Eleams, as well as handling their financial affairs, paying bills and such.
In 2002, after several negative encounters with his other son, Butch Eleam, and his daughter’s son, Scott Copeland, (who worked for his Uncle Butch), Woodrow Wilson Eleam asked Bob and Janet Eleam to help him find an attorney who could draw up news wills.
Bob, Janet and Woodrow Eleam chose Buddy Hill, of Dickerson & Hill, LLC. Woodrow Wilson signed Check # 402, drawn on his account with People’s First, in the amount of $800.00, making out the check himself, to Dickerson-Hill, LLC. Buddy Hill and Charles Dickerson drew up a Last Will and Testament, a Durable Power of Attorney, and Living Wills, for end of life decisions. These documents were completed on June 27, 2002.
The issue of the check and who wrote it and signed it is critical, as you will later see.
These wills left all properties to each other, as spouses, but provided that in the event either spouse predeceased one of them, that the properties would be divided such that their daughter Anne Eleam Copeland would get the Espy Street address real property, and the two boys, Allen W. (Butch) Eleam and Robert L. Eleam, Sr., would each get half of the 134 and 33/100ths acre farm.
Because Bob and Janet Eleam had been caring for them for several years, Woodrow and Martha Eleam left the household furnishings in the Espy Street home to Bob, but split the farm equipment between the two brothers.
In the Durable POA, Bob Eleam was named the Agent for both his mother and his father.
According to Janet Eleam, when her brother-in-law, Butch Eleam, learned what his father had done, he came to the family farm house, and demanded that Bob and Janet tear up their father’s and mother’s wills. Of course, that was not a decision for Bob and Janet to make – to tear up someone else’s will.
So, Butch Eleam confronted his aging father at the older couple’s Espy Street home. According to Janet Eleam, Butch Eleam told his father, “I’ve got the money, power and means to put your ass away in a nursing home and forget about you, old man”.
Janet Eleam says that she will never forget that encounter, as she watched in horror while her brother-in-law verbally attacked his own father. She watched as her aging, injured father-in-law tried to stand up, pulling himself high in his chair, and tell his son, “If I could stand up and get my gun, I’d put a hole right between your eyes. You get out of my house, now”.
Janet knew enough to write this down, to document it, in case there was ever any violence between the two later.
The next day, Butch Eleam paid a visit to Bob and Janet’s home, and asked if they knew if their father kept a gun in the house on Espy Street. Bob Eleam confirmed that their father did, and Butch told Bob to get rid of it.
Later, Butch Eleam hired a “Housekeeper/Nurse”, to help Janet and Bob look after their parents. But the nurse confided in both Bob and Janet Eleam that she was administering the meds with alcohol to help “relax” Mr. Eleam. This caused Mr. Woodrow Wilson Eleam to begin to hallucinate. On top of the pain meds and antidepressants, prescribed for his injured hip, the alcohol was making Mr. Eleam even more confused , and in early September, doctors determined that both Mr. Woodrow Wilson Eleam and Mrs. Martha Eleam were no longer competent to sign documents. That evaluation/determination took place on September 9, 2002.
Four days later, on September 13, 2002, Woodrow called Janet and Bob and told them that attorneys Arch Farrar and Chris Corbin and someone else had been to the Espy Street home and instructed he and his wife to sign some papers, but that he wasn’t sure what it was that Mr. Farrar had made them sign.
Bob and Janet Eleam knew…it had to be new wills.
Indeed, new wills prepared by Arch Farrar, of Farrar and Corbin, for both of the Medically Declared Incompetent Eleams had been signed by two witnesses, including Arch Farrar’s law partner, City of Summerville attorney Chris Corbin. The wills were then notarized by Joyce Brown.
The $900.00 check paid to Arch Farrar for this work was written out by/signed by Butch Eleam, NOT Mr. Woodrow Wilson Eleam, whose wills were prepared. Remember that earlier when Mr. Eleam had wanted news wills, HE wrote the check out. HE signed the check paid to Charles Dickerson and Buddy Hill.
The new wills, again, left all of their property to each other, as spouses. But as a provision in the event one spouse predeceased another, the new wills, instead of specifically dividing the real estate and property to avoid sibling infighting, as the wills prepared by Dickerson-Hill had, instead simply gave each child a 1/3 interest of all property lumped together, and made each child a co-executor - a muddled mess which screams for confusion and in-fighting.
On November 16, 2002, Mr. Woodrow Wilson Eleam died.
On April 28, 2003, attorney Arch Farrar probated the will, providing only verifications for the widow, Martha Eleam, son Butch Eleam and daughter Ann Eleam Copeland. No effort was made to include Bob Eleam.
Anne Copeland was soon diagnosed with cancer, and as medical bills added up, Butch Eleam sued his sister over a property deal her late husband, Charles Copeland, had been involved with Butch Eleam in.
Butch Eleam sued his own flesh and blood, who was a widow, and who was battlingcancer.
Almost immediately after probating the wills, Butch moved his aging mother, Martha Eleam, into Assisted Living at Oakview, there in Summerville, Georgia. THEN Butch Eleam SOLD the house on Espy Street to Caroline Wyatt – the house that was supposed to go to his sister Anne Eleam Copeland, who was now suffering from cancer. Butch also sold all of Martha and her late husband’s possessions from that home – those things which were supposed to go to Bob and Janet Eleam, for the years of care they had provided their parents.
Bob and Janet Eleam took their mother through the house before it closed, and showed her what Butch Eleam had done. Mrs. Eleam was devastated that her possessions andher home had been sold, and confused as to how it could have happened.
She insisted that she NEVER gave permission to anyone to sell anything. She insisted that she had never signed anything allowing this to take place.
But she is easily confused, and had been declared incompetent several years earlier.Anyone allowing her to sign ANYTHING should have known they were breaking the law.
THEN, in January, 2004, Bob Eleam received a TYPED letter from his mother, Martha. Keep in mind that at this point, no LEGAL transfers of property hadoccurred, that Mrs. Eleam was aware of, and that it was Bob and Janet who had showed Mrs. Eleam that her home and possessions on Espy Street had been sold by her other son, Butch.
In the January 22, 2004 letter, letter, Bob’s mother, Martha, who had been declared incompetent more two years earlier, ALLEGEDLY typed, and signed:
Dear Bob,
I plan to have some work done at the farm. I may need to establish it as my residence. Please find yourself another lace by 4-1-04. You are not to take any of my property from the farm which includes any of the farm equipment. This includes both tractors and the 1948 Ford Truck. I have spoken to Sheriff Ralph Kellett about these items, and expect you to abide by this. Please give me any of my china and my furniture and the toys carved by Daddy. I did not give you permission to take these items. I have been deeply hurt by the way you have acted. I f you have any questions, you may talk to Butch or Anne and if you talk to me, please have one of them present.
Your mother, ….
Of course, Mrs. Eleam was not able to move back into her home. Neither Bob nor Janet had taken anything from the home, not china, not farm equipment, not hand-carved toys.Butch Eleam had already sold everything from Mrs. Eleam’s home, and had sold the home, too. But someone was filling the confused Martha Eleam with lies.
Bob and Janet eventually moved out of the farm house, and into a home they had been building on property near the farm.But over the next few months, as they prepared to move, Bob and Janet Eleam would find items moved around inside the farm house, their home. Sometimes items were missing. They filed FIVE burglary reports over a few month period, but when the burglaries became large scale, including jewelry and silverware, Bob and Janet Eleam went to see Sheriff Ralph Kellett. Kellett told them he knew who was stealing the property, but that he did not like to get in the middle of family disputes.
Then, just as in the Luke Puckett story, Sheriff Kellett told Bob and Janet Eleam that they should move out of the county.
That December, Bob and Janet Eleam filed one final complaint with the Chattooga County Sheriff’s Office, Incident Report #0502005. NOTHING was ever done. Worse, though, is that the Sheriff’s Office, under Ralph Kellett, lost all but that one complaint.
ALSO that December 2004, DESPITE the fact that for two years already, Martha Eleam had been declared mentally incompetent, Arch Farrar drew up a Warranty Deed transferring all of Martha Eleam’s remaining real property, primarily the 130 acre family farm, to Butch Eleam and the very sick Ann Eleam Copeland.
Nothing was given to Bob Eleam.
But in another twist of fate, Anne Eleam Copeland succumbed to her cancer, and her property was in turn left to her only son, Scott Copeland.
Bob and Janet Eleam are currently attempting to fight Butch Eleam, and ScottCopeland to some extent, for the illegal transfer of property forced on their mentally incompetent mother, because long before any property transfers had taken place, she had been declared incompetent.
And all of this has been orchestrated by Butch Eleam, conspiring with Arch Farrar and Chris Corbin, who drew up the transfer of property, and had Mrs. Martha Eleam signing documents, despite the legal declaration that Mrs. Eleam was incompetent.
Teresa Watson
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Posted on January 31st, 2010.
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