“What am I going to do now?”: 77-year-old widow forced from her home
When Rosemarie Earley lost her husband, Eric Earley, she’d already suffered enough heartbreak to last a lifetime.
But her devastating situation wasn’t to end there, with the New South Wales government landing one more blow to the 77-year-old: she had to leave the home she and Eric had shared for almost 50 years.
Rosemarie and Eric had moved in to their Pendlebury Parade property in the ‘70s, establishing themselves as well-known and well-loved fixtures of the street.
However, it was their experience back then that seems to have caused Rosemarie’s present day trouble, with different rules and regulations surrounding whose name could be on the lease.
As Rosemarie explained to A Current Affair’s Hannah Sinclair, the paperwork was “in my husband's name. Eric Earley. The females had no say in the matter back in those days. Everything was in the husband's name because he was classed as the breadwinner. We were just housewives.”
Rosemarie and Eric had left England for a new and “better life for the family” in 1971, and were allocated their home by the government.
"When we moved in it was an empty shell,” she said. “There were no carpets, no window fittings, not even lightbulbs. No soil. So we had to buy soil.
“We bought a garage, we paid to have the gas connected, put the carpet [down] and everything else that was needed.
"We were under the impression we were buying because the paperwork said we had been approved to purchase.”
But this was not the case, as Rosemarie went on to explain. When their rent collector had dropped by, Eric had asked when the pair might be able to pay their deposit on the home, but was told they never would.
“We were actually told by the man that came and did the inspection a couple of weeks after we moved in that, 'this is your house, you can stay here till you die'. That was his words," she recalled.
It was a cruel reminder that Rosemarie was served in late 2022, when Eric passed away from heart failure at just 83 years old.
In the wake of her devastating loss, Rosemarie contacted the government and applied to be recognised as a tenant.
They had other ideas, and just a few months later, Rosemarie was informed the one level house with ramp access did not meet her needs anymore.
“I was so happy when I finally signed the paperwork to say that I could live here and it was now in my name,” she said, “and then six weeks later or so, I got the letter saying that this house no longer meets my needs.
"I don't understand why. Why couldn't they wait till my husband had been gone even 12 months, so that I would have acclimatised to being on my own? Why did it have to be four months?"
Rosemarie went on to admit that she thinks Eric would be “devastated” to know what she was going through without him, admitting that “that was his one worry, that I wouldn't get treated properly when he died and that's what's happened. I'm not getting treated properly."
"Can you believe that in 2023 as a woman you still don't have the same rights as your husband?
"I don't know. Why are they still going by those rules? Why haven't they adapted to the fact that life now is in two names? Husband and wife, or man and woman. A partner.”
Images: A Current Affair / Nine