“Renn felt like it was the only way to get out and salvage anything,” she says of the stipulation he signed waiving his homestead exemption. “He was under duress and stress. He just wanted to get the burden off his back.”

Making matters worse, Ryan says Bodeker was flown to the VA Hospital at Fort Harrison in Helena 2 1/2 weeks ago, where his cancer was diagnosed and where he was still a patient when Judge Ralph B. Kirscher took up the bankruptcy filing on June 12 in Missoula.

Bodeker had been unable to find a new bankruptcy attorney, Ryan says, and was listed as representing himself. He had signed over the power of attorney to her, Ryan says, and she asked the court for a continuance because Bodeker was hospitalized, “but the judge rejected it because they said he was pro se.”

She frantically tried to fax the motion to the VA Hospital for Bodeker’s signature, and to also obtain his doctor’s report showing he had been diagnosed with “advanced prostate cancer.”

“Information came in, but it was at the same time the hearing was going on,” McCarthy says. “We did get a call from the VA, but it was at the time the hearing was going on.”

Kirscher denied Bodeker’s bankruptcy filing and ordered he had to either vacate, sell or expunge his property.