Paula Asher has lost everything in just two years – her husband, money, job and now is on the brink of having her home taken away.

The 63-year-old grandmother said her string of tragedies began early last year when she discovered her dying husband Miles had remortgaged their house then flown to Dubai after being tricked by internet fraudsters. He was fleeced of all their cash.

Miles, 63, died on July 22 after suffering motor neurone disease, a neurological condition which causes progressive degeneration of cells in the brain and spinal cord, and can affect decision making.

Paula's late husband Miles.

He was diagnosed in January. Paula said in the months before her husband's death, he made a series of "poor financial decisions".

Paula said TSB Bank allowed Miles to freeze their mortgage on their home on Auckland's North Shore of around $500,000 over the telephone. He told the bank he would pay the loan in "one lump sum" using money from a Dubai-based investment.

Paula said bank staff asked her husband to fax documents bearing both of their signatures, which he forged, to enable the payments to be frozen.

She said she was unaware what her husband of 20 years had done, and had no idea their $700 weekly mortgage payments were going unpaid and tumbling into arrears.

Paula said TSB allowed Miles to use their home to borrow the $45,000 he then invested in the Dubai scam.

TSB has now put the house in Birkenhead up for a mortgagee sale.

Paula has no way of paying the mortgage herself after leaving her job in the tourism industry to help care for her ill husband.

Yesterday, Paula said TSB should have contacted her when they began receiving "strange requests" from her husband.

"Surely to God someone who gets a call at a bank with the stuff he was saying would raise alarm bells," Paula said. "My husband always looked after the finances and he was damn good at it, never a problem. But when he started getting sick his rationale went out the door. He started talking about how he would earn millions from the Dubai scheme and I tried to tell him it was a load of nonsense but he wasn't interested in listening."

Paula has briefed a barrister and is considering taking legal action against TSB.

"I am not looking for sympathy but I suppose you could say I am unlucky, very unlucky. It's been a bad couple of years. Everything has gone from before my eyes."

TSB – which handles bank accounts for 3% of Kiwis – last night said they would review Paula's file.

The bank's managing director Kevin Rimmington told Sunday News that staff were trained in dealing with customers who behaved like Paula said Miles did in his last months.

"If people aren't of sound mind, then we would take that into account," he said. "All such cases should be treated with caution."

Rimmington said TSB was currently dealing with three mortgagee sales. "Obviously they create a very stressful period in people's lives," he said.

After Paula discovered her home was going to be sold by the bank, she turned to Home Rescue – a Hamilton-based firm which told customers that for a fee of $200 per week they could prevent mortgagee sales.

Home Rescue, no longer operating and the subject of a police investigation, relied on supposed Maori statutes to claim mortgages were illegal.

Paula said she was desperate and signed up with Home Rescue in November 2008 at a cost of $10,070, which equated to one per cent of her home's valuation and outstanding mortgage.

The company provided her with a trespass notice she was told to pin to her front door which warned real estate agents, debt collectors and police officers to keep off her property or they would be charged with trespass.

Barfoot and Thompson were engaged by TSB to sell Paula's home and were confronted with the trespass notice, which had made some potential buyers feel uncomfortable.

"It is rare for home owners under the threat of a mortgagee sale to challenge access to a property by putting up trespass notices or land claim notices," said Barfoot and Thompson managing director Peter Thompson.

"Most people faced with a mortgagee sale see the sense of working with the agent and lender to get the best possible price."

Motor neurone disease, which mainly affects people over 50, causes muscle spasms, exaggerated reflexes and an increasing wasting and weakness of muscles responsible for speech, swallowing and chewing. National manager of the Motor Neurone Association, Diane Robinson, said the theory that the disease affected patients' brain functions was controversial and needed more research. But there was research, in Australia and New Zealand, which "suggested" it affected thinking and reasoning.