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Claremore property was purchased on April 3, 1987, from James T.
and Virginia L. Arnold for $135,000 and was titled in the name of
Alice Criner, petitioner’s mother. No mortgage was recorded
against the property in connection with the 1987 purchase. The
record in this case contains no evidence of the source of the
funds used to purchase the Claremore property in 1987.3
When the Claremore property was purchased in 1987, Alice
Criner was in her mid-sixties. She had worked for St. John’s
Hospital for approximately 30 years. When Alice Criner retired
sometime in the early 1980s, she was a cafeteria supervisor. In
1987, Alice Criner’s income consisted of retirement benefits from
St. John’s Hospital and possibly Social Security benefits.
Alice Criner lived in the Claremore property for an unknown
length of time between April 1987 and 1989. She never owned a
car and did not know how to drive. For the last few years of her
life, Alice Criner suffered from advanced-stage Parkinson’s
disease. Sometime between April 1987 and her death in 1989,
Alice Criner became too ill to live at the Claremore property and
was moved into a care facility in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Alice
Criner died intestate on August 21, 1989. Each of Alice Criner’s
six children received approximately $1,400 in death benefits from
a life insurance policy as a result of her death.
3Alice Criner’s daughter, Jeannie McLelland, testified that
she did not know where her mother would have gotten the funds to
purchase the Claremore property in 1987.
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