Gloria Vance paid nothing.

She never lived there.

She never paid the mortgage, the taxes, the insurance or the upkeep.

We lived in it for fourteen years and paid everything and told everybody it was our house, which it was, in every sense except the only one that turned out to matter.

And in 2011 that was not a fraud and I do not think anybody intended one.

It was an entirely commonplace piece of family tax and liability planning, recommended by a professional, executed by a lawyer, recorded at a town clerk’s office in broad daylight.