A beloved local chef faces foreclosure despite a years-old reverse mortgage on her home.

When Wendy Brodie and her late husband Robert “Buzz” Bussinger built their Carmel home, it was meant to be their forever place.

The Mentone Drive residence was not only where they lived for nearly 20 years – it was the place they developed their business. Brodie, a well-known chef, event planner and caterer, and Bussinger, a hotelier and restaurant manager, developed and produced Brodie’s Comcast and PBS show, The Art of Food, using their home as a lab. With a commercial kitchen and walk-in refrigerator, the couple hosted as many as 100 guests at a time for charity events benefiting such local nonprofits as Meals on Wheels, Legal Services for Seniors, Monterey Bay Aquarium and others.

“Anyone in the community willing to open a home for us, it’s a benefit,” says Kellie Morgantini, executive director of Legal Services for Seniors. “Ms. Brodie and her family didn’t have to do that, and because they did, we made friends who gave us financial support over the years.”

Bussinger died in 2019 and now Brodie is in a legal battle to preserve her ownership of the home they thought they’d have for the rest of their lives. It’s a complicated case, laid out in a lawsuit filed Aug. 7 in Monterey County Superior Court, involving a reverse mortgage Bussinger and Brodie took out before the financial crisis of 2008, and a number of financial institutions that took the loan and passed it around like peanuts at a cocktail party.

“There was a combination of circumstances that really dictated they find a solution to an ever-increasing mortgage payment,” Charles Keller, Brodie’s attorney, said of the original mortgage the couple had with the now-defunct Washington Mutual Bank. “Their respective ages and incomes wouldn’t sustain the payments going forward.”

Bussinger applied for the reverse mortgage with Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, and intended to use the proceeds to pay off the original mortgage with Wa-Mu. But Brodie was only 57 at the time, and thus didn’t meet the minimum age of 62 to have her name on the reverse loan.

The loan agent, according to the lawsuit, recommended that Brodie deed her interest in the home to Bussinger, taking her name off the title.

“She could be put back on title to the property provided that it was done before her husband died,” the agent told the couple, according to the suit, and “she would be able to live in the home for the rest of her life if she outlived her husband.”

The reverse mortgage was struck, after Brodie removed her name from the title, with a lender known as Financial Freedom. When she turned 62, Bussinger contacted Wells Fargo and asked that she be placed back on the title, only to be told that Wells was no longer in the reverse mortgage business. In 2018, the loan was sold to Cascade Funding. After Bussinger’s death, Cascade’s loan servicer, Celink, called the loan and told Brodie she had 30 days to pay or they would foreclose.

“It’s very stressful for her,” Keller says of Brodie. “It goes without saying that the thought of having an impending foreclosure, well, put yourself in her position. ”

A hearing on Brodie’s request for a preliminary injunction to stave off the foreclosure is set for Sept. 4.

(Editor's note: This story has been changed to correct the spelling of Bussinger's last name.)