In 2020, Bethany Michel moved into her father’s home in the Freedom at Arbor Mill community in Jacksonville, Florida, a 55-and-older neighborhood. Her father, a disabled veteran, was terminally ill and needed dialysis care. Restrictions at his assisted living facility during COVID made it impossible to provide that care there, so Bethany moved in to look after him herself.
She was 22 years old. Her father was in his fifties. The home met the community’s age requirements because he lived there.
He died in October 2023. Three months later, the HOA sent Bethany a notice. She was 25. She no longer met the community’s age requirements. She needed to leave.
Bethany refused. Her father’s dying wish had been for the home to go to his daughter. A Duval County probate judge officially ruled the home belonged to her in March 2025. She had also been told by the home’s original builder that she would be grandfathered in after her father’s death, though she says she never received that in writing.
The HOA sued anyway.
After nearly three years of legal back and forth, the HOA board recently approved a $155,000 special assessment to fund the ongoing lawsuit, splitting the cost among the community’s 155 homeowners at $1,000 each.
Bethany owns one of those lots. So she is being charged $1,000 toward the legal fees being used to evict her from her own home.
“It feels like we aren’t in reality,” she said. “It’s like a sick and twisted joke.”
Her attorney put it more plainly: “They’re going to charge her $1,000 so that they can then use that money to sue her.”
Bethany says she isn’t going anywhere. “We fought to the very end, and the fight is not finished just because my dad is gone,” she said. “I still have the fight left in me
She Inherited Her Father’s Home—Now the HOA Is Charging Her to Sue Her
