Daughter sued too late over loan on parents’ Jackson home, appeals court rules

William Brown and his wife owned a home on Laura Avenue in Jackson, according to the opinion. They signed a note to borrow $119,356.26 from Wells Fargo, backed by a deed of trust. That is a paper that lets a lender take the home if the loan goes unpaid.

The deed of trust was recorded, meaning filed in the public land records, in Hinds County on Oct. 16, 2008. Mrs. Brown died in 2009 and Mr. Brown in 2017, and neither challenged the loan, the court wrote.

In 2019, Mr. Brown’s estate, meaning the property he left, won an order halting the bank’s foreclosure, its move to take the house. That order was later lifted, the opinion says.

In 2022, their daughter, ReJohnna Mitchell, sued as the person in charge of her father’s estate. She claimed her mother lacked the mental capacity to sign and had been under a conservatorship, meaning someone else managed her affairs.

The court noted that Mrs. Brown’s signature on the deed of trust is ‘merely an odd scribble.’ The trial court dismissed the suit as filed too late, and Mitchell, representing herself, appealed.

The Court of Appeals affirmed, meaning it let the dismissal stand. Judge McCarty wrote the opinion, and all nine judges who took part agreed. Judge Westbrooks did not participate.

The deadline to sue, called the statute of limitations, started when the deed of trust was recorded in 2008, the court held. It relied on a 2021 Supreme Court ruling about deeds.

The trial court had used a three-year deadline for fraud claims. The appeals court said the right one was 10 years, the deadline for suits to recover land. But Mitchell had agreed to the three-year rule in the trial court, so she could not switch now, the court wrote.

Either way, she lost. Ten years from 2008 ran out by 2018, and she sued in 2022, so ‘the statute of limitations had long run,’ the court wrote.

The court wrote that Mrs. Brown’s shaky signature ‘is visible and concerning.’ Still, under an earlier Supreme Court ruling that lower courts follow, the clock started in 2008. The court upheld the dismissal ‘with prejudice,’ meaning the claim cannot be filed again.

Mitchell argued she did not learn of her mother’s signature until 2019. The trial court found the deed was public record, so no one hid it, and the appeals court agreed the clock started at recording.

The court also applied what it called an ‘ancient rule.’ A party that relies on the wrong deadline in the trial court is stuck with the result.

The Wire’s read: for heirs who doubt a parent’s loan papers, the deadline may have started years ago, when the papers were recorded.

The opinion does not say what happens to the house now. It says the order halting foreclosure was lifted, but not whether the bank has foreclosed.

The home is on Laura Avenue in Jackson, and the deed of trust was recorded in Hinds County. The case came from Hinds County Chancery Court, where Judge J. Dewayne Thomas dismissed it in September 2025.

The ruling does not send the case back to the trial court. Either side may ask the court to reconsider, a step called a motion for rehearing. None had been filed when the opinion was released, its cover page shows.