NEW GLOUCESTER – The day Omer Morin’s wife died in 2007 he not only lost a good wife of 65 years. He says he lost legal possession of their two homes, a New Gloucester lake house he built for he and his wife and their five children, and another year-round home in Lake Worth, Fla.

Morin has advice for other seniors whose children – or anyone – wants them to sign a will or trust.

“Make damned sure whatever you sign, you read. Or get yourself your own lawyer,” said Morin, 90. He and his wife didn’t read what they signed nine years ago, he said.

Now, two of his daughters legally control the properties, Morin said. In an Aug. 14 letter, the daughters’ lawyer warned Morin that he must leave his Maine lake house and go back to Florida or be charged with criminal trespassing.

He had until 6 p.m. Sept. 9 to leave.

Sept. 9 came and went.

“I’m still here,” Morin said from one of the living rooms in the lake house.

A Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy visited him as requested by the daughters’ lawyer.

“I told him, ‘You can do what you wish but I’m not going,'” Morin said. “You can arrest me if you want. If you arrest me I’ll bail myself out.'”

There was no charge or arrest.

Cumberland County Sheriff Mark Dion said his deputy concluded there’s a civil dispute over the property. When the deputy visited, “there was no legal instrument” to evict Morin, Dion said.

There also were no risk factors to remove Morin from the property.

“Granted, he’s elderly,” Dion said. “But we could find no evidence Mr. Morin was under the guardianship of the trust,” Dion said. “Mr. Morin seemed of sound mind. He was reasonable and articulate. So we removed ourselves and let the man go about his business.”

Morin’s daughters, Diane Carson and Rachel Deckard, both of Florida, instructed their lawyer, Jill Checkoway of Skelton Taintor & Abbott in Auburn, not to respond to questions from reporters.

In the letter to Morin, “your children have always had your best interests, safety and well-being in mind and continue to do so,” Checkoway wrote. “As trustees, however, they must comply with Maine law and meet their fiduciary duties in securing the real estate.”

In that letter the daughters are seeking Morin’s removal because they want to close the house for the winter. Morin says he wants to do that when he’s ready, as he has for years.

He took a reporter and photographer through his house. He’s taken steps (numerous beds mattresses and box springs are stood up with boards between them to protect from cold and moisture, and bedding is put away in plastic bags) to close the house up for winter.

Morin’s lawyer, Charles Hedrick of Lewiston, said from what he can determine Morin is a legal beneficiary of the trust, so as long as he lives the property is to be managed for his benefit. Upon his death the property would be split among his five children.

What his daughters are doing “is probably well-intentioned,” Hedrick said. “It strikes me as if his daughters are acting like court-appointed guardians,” he said. They are not, he added.

Morin and his wife married in Lewiston in 1941. He fought in World War II, worked for Bath Iron Works and was a Lewiston landlord. The couple bought what was an ordinary camp on Sabbathday Lake in 1951 and eventually moved to Florida. Each summer the family summered in New Gloucester, where Morin converted the camp into a large home with an indoor swimming pool.

Morin said his property troubles stem from 1999 when two daughters suggested they sign an updated trust.

Morin and his wife agreed and “didn’t bother about the trust. I figured they were going to make the trust just like the other,” Morin said. In the first will the surviving spouse would inherit the assets; if both died the assets would be split among the children.

The second trust was different, Morin said. Upon Madeline’s death, management of the two properties would go to daughters Carson and Deckard, Morin explained.

“They made the trust,” he said. Morin and his wife never read it.

“We made a big mistake, he said. “I trusted my children. I don’t trust them anymore.”

In 2007, Madeline Morin died at 83 while undergoing gallbladder surgery. When hospital personnel told him his wife had died, “you could have hit me with a sledgehammer,” Morin said. “Sixty five years of marriage. I lost a good wife.”

After the funeral, there was a family meeting where the trust was read. After a couple of paragraphs Morin told the lawyer reading the document to stop. “You mean to tell me all the property I’ve got belongs to the children?” he asked. “‘That’s right,'” Morin said he was told.

Morin objected. There was disagreement. “From that time on the kids have been mad at me,” he said. “They spend the summer here, but they don’t talk to me.”

The home in New Gloucester consists of two connected units, each with one or more living rooms, a kitchen, four-plus bedrooms and two baths. Morin said he built the home large enough so he and his wife could have their own space, and their grown children could have their own private space.

Morin’s lawyer wrote he was hopeful Morin was still the legal owner, until Checkoway produced copies of 1999 documents in which Morin and his wife legally transferred the property to the trust.

Hedrick recommended Morin leave for Florida as his daughters ordered. Otherwise, they have threatened they will not allow him to use the house next summer.

No, Morin says. “It might not be my place on paper, but it’s my building. It’s not the children who worked for this.”

Next summer, “if I’m healthy, I’m going to be back here, one way or the other. It’s my property.”