S2 E37: Big Girl Pants Moment | Military Suicide, Selling Through Grief, and Showing Up for Clients in Crisis

This is not a typical real estate episode.

In Episode 37 of Closing Chapters, Brittney shares one of the most emotionally heavy transactions of her career: helping a young military widow sell the family home after her husband died by suicide in September 2019. With three little girls, a house full of trauma, and zero support from the mortgage servicer, this military spouse needed someone to show up fully. Brittney did.

From navigating a property that required sensitive remediation to protecting her client from every painful detail she didn't need to know, Brittney walks through what it actually looks like to serve someone at their absolute lowest. She also opens up about her own hesitation, the phone call to her aunt that changed everything, and the teammate who helped her walk through that front door for the first time.

This episode is also a call to action. Brittney speaks honestly about the gaps in the system: mortgage servicers that refused to communicate with a surviving spouse, news articles that published identifying details of a military family, and the lack of clear guidance for what military families should do to protect each other before the unthinkable happens. If you are in real estate or military life, this one will stay with you.


Key Takeaways


 • Agents are called to serve in the best and worst of times. Do not cherry-pick when you show up.

 • Having a trusted teammate or colleague matters. You do not have to walk into hard situations alone.

 • Mortgage servicers need better protocols for surviving spouses. The current system leaves families stranded.

 • Sellers in crisis need a buffer, not more information. Protect them from every detail that isn't theirs to carry.

 • A FSBO appointment, a grief sale, or a distressed property is still a moment to serve with full professionalism.

 • Military families need estate planning and shared account access long before they think they need it.

 • Suicide in the military community is real, prevalent, and worth talking about openly.

 • News media publishing identifying details of military family tragedies causes long-term harm to surviving children. 

🎧If this episode moved you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who needs to hear it. This kind of story deserves a wide audience, whether you are a military family, a real estate agent, or simply someone who cares about the people around you. Your support helps this podcast reach more of the communities who need it most.

Closing Chapters Podcast: Where Every Mission Has A Story

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Disclaimer: This podcast education only & is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Talk with your own pros about your situation. Opinions are my own.

© 2025 Brittney Frye. All rights reserved. Realtor, license # 352197 in NC. Brokerage: REAL Broker l Military Division

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey there friend! Welcome back to the closing chapters podcast where every mission has a story. This transaction is one of those transactions that makes you think about life. It makes you pay attention to those around you a whole lot more. It makes you be thankful for the people you have around you that have strengths that are not your own. And teamwork and understanding all the way around. All the way around. Hello, welcome back, my friends. Today we are talking about a transaction that closed September 30th, 2019. And if I'm being honest, this is the transaction that I never wanted to have. But you're gonna learn more about that. So this is a resale property for me. This is a property that I helped these clients purchase, and it was a military family with three little girls. There is one daughter and then two twins that were a little bit younger. They were all pretty close in age. So, anyhow, I helped them purchase this home, and it was a really fun fit for them. It had an in-ground pool, but it was pretty shallow. It wasn't a very big pool, but it was and it was fenced around it. It had a really nice big detached garage workshop in the backyard, completely fenced in, room to garden, and it was just in a nice quiet area. And I recently sold a house a year and a half, two years ago, two summers ago, on this same road. And it was like deja vu all over again. But anyhow, shall we begin? This transaction is one of those transactions that makes you think about life, it makes you pay attention to those around you a whole lot more, it makes you be thankful for the people you have around you that have strengths that are not your own, and teamwork and understanding all the way around, all the way around. So this transaction came from a really bad scenario. So I will tell you that this is definitely a trigger warning situation. So if you do not want to talk about anything bad, then you should probably just skip through this episode. But this is the reality, especially in the military world. So we're gonna talk about it because it needs to be known, it needs to be highlighted, and we need to do better, and we've got to help one another. And sometimes I understand there's not help to be had, and everybody makes their own decisions, but as a whole, we can try our best and try to make this a better scenario. So this military family had been here for a while. This was their not their first duty station, and the military spouse was had been working previously, came to South Carolina, then was a stay-at-home mom because she just didn't have another job lined up. And then she started working at Starbucks, and honestly, it was really cool. Starbucks also was helping fund her to go to college, so it was neat. She could do different programs by being a manager there and transferring all around. And honestly, throughout this situation, I can say that she very much so reported that Starbucks was extremely good to her from the corporate management side of taking care of her through the situation, helping her relocate through the situation, and not letting a tragedy get in the way of her being able to provide for her family. So kudos to you, Starbucks, for doing a good job for this sweet military spouse. But the scenario that was going on here is that the member was due to deploy, he had orders to deploy, and he did not pass his physical fitness test for the second time in a row. And that meant one, he was not going to be able to deploy, and two, it was a next step action situation. Like, what do we do about this? And it seems like maybe there's a little bit of asthma in the situation, from what I understand, where he was not doing great with his runs or being able to withstand the capacity of the physical fitness test. However, it's there for a reason, right? So, anyhow, that created a lot of angst and anguish, and it wasn't the only thing going on, right? There's a lot of life in between, and there were some ups and downs from what I understand already, but they also were taking some of the right steps to work together on life. And it's just a reminder that sometimes all it takes is a split instant, one bad situation, one moment of feeling like there's no way out, and everything changes. And so this particular morning, literally, he got home, he called his wife and told his wife, hey, I failed my PT test, and basically said a couple things and hung up the phone on her. And she knew that was very erratic for him and not okay for him, and left work immediately. And when she got home, she found him and he had already committed suicide. She's pretty sure that it happened in an instant, as soon as he hung up the phone. There is not a thing in the world that this woman could have done differently. She cannot harbor that, she cannot hold on to that. She tried to talk to him on the phone, she tried to call him back over and over again. She left work immediately because she knew something wasn't right. She could not control the situation. So it wasn't like there was a cry for help and she didn't go like this girl's amazing. And she really just had such a crazy reaction to the scenario as anyone would, where it was like, okay, take me next. If you're gone, I'm gone. And in those moments, I like one, I'm so proud and thankful for her to share those moments with me because that's so hard and so personal. But also, it just is such a reminder that like when you get put into key scenarios, like blinders are on, right? Like they have three beautiful children, and in that moment, like it wasn't even a thought. It was not even a thought. So, anyhow, it was a very sad situation. And like any other spouse would do, she grabbed her girls and got out of state as quickly as possible. Basically, took what she needed to and left the property. She came by my office to explain to me what's going on and that she needed help to sell the property. And basically, as long as she could get out from underneath of it, then she was okay when she was gonna be moving on to back home with her family and finding her next place to continue life, unfortunately. Yeah. So some of the things that we learned along this area, one, when she told me about this, I uh previous few years ago, previous to this, I'd had a coworker that also took his life. And I don't think that I ever got to deal with that head to head. I wasn't where I could go to his funeral, see the people that we all that we all work together with. I didn't get to process it. And I know it was one of those things where once again, it was a moment in time. It was somebody that had a hard time with his mental health and was usually on medication and was trying really hard to get off of medication, but also liked to drink at night. And unfortunately, that's exactly what happened is one night he drank too much and just really made a bad decision in an instant. In an instant. Such a super fun guy. But yeah, so when this scenario happened, I actually called my aunt and I said, you know, I don't know what to do about this. I really don't want to handle it. I don't want to be a part of suicide. I just don't want to be associated with that. And she said, Brittany, this girl is calling you with the biggest need of her life. She is asking you to be there, she is trusting you. You better put your big girl panties on and figure it out and take care of this girl because she trusts you right now in a world of hurt and chaos. And my aunt is right, she was right. That's all there is to it, right? This is one of those reminders that we get to help people in the best of times and the worst of times, and we don't we shouldn't cherry pick that, right? Especially in the worst of times when it's someone that has a reputation, like you have a relationship together already, and they are trusting you. They are trusting you at their lowest moment and need someone to be in their corner that they know they can value and trust and just relinquish control. So naturally I said, okay, how do I do this? And at the time, the office that I was in, there was three of us that kind of hung out together in one big open room. And it was two gentlemen and me. And one of those gentlemen happened to be retired security forces from the Air Force, and he used to do investigations and all that stuff, and he would tell us he had some stories to tell, right? So, anyhow, I went to him and I said, Hey, I have this scenario. I need to go to the house. I'm afraid to go to the house by myself. Can you please walk with me through it? We've got to figure out what needs to be done and go from there. So thankfully, he was willing to team up with me on this and would go to the property with me anytime I needed to go to the property. If I had to go into the property, he was there and was very thankful for that. Help me meet the contractor and talk about a number of scenarios to try to navigate through what a learning curve this was. So when this happens, apparently, there is a crew that comes in and is supposed to clean the property and they replace some carpet and stuff like that. They did not do a good job of any of it. And the spouse certainly didn't need to know nor combat that, right? She was just ready to not have to handle the scenario anymore. So she just said, look, as long as I can spend about this much money to get the house ready, so as long as do whatever you think it needs to be done, I just just help me. And so when we walked to the property, we realized that the carpet had to be replaced. What they did was not sufficient. And there was still damage to the cabinets and a wall and a closet from this scenario. So I had to call a contractor and explain to him, like, hey, full disclosure, I need you to fix these items. And it's going to be very apparent when you see it, what happened here. And oh, by the way, I also need you to take up this carpet and put in new flooring. And I don't know what you're gonna find underneath. I feel like if I were a contractor, I'd be like, deuces, no, thank you, not me. And this guy was so humble. He was like, you know what, things happen and people need help. And I was like, thank goodness, thank goodness. And it was really like a lipstick on a pig situation, right? There's not a whole lot you can do sometimes to truly fix these scenarios and make it look perfection, but it was like he did what he could with the scenario. And he was like, Listen, the carpet itself on top was brand new. He was like, Do you mind if I keep that carpet or do I need to toss it? And I was like, No, you can keep it. He was like, Great, I line my I'll line my trailer with it. It's brand new, and I can use it to protect my trailer and everything that we put inside of it for materials and stuff. And I was like, Okay. So, but and he was so gracious, he did not ever tell me whether there was a concern or an issue, whatever he pulled up the floors. He just fixed everything, he just made it right. And I'm so grateful for that. I'm so grateful that there was a buffer to a buffer, meaning I'm the original buffer and somebody buffered me a little bit, which is so thankful. And the other big thing we had to figure out was the pool. The pool had been left, and there was all kinds of junk in it, and goodness gracious, who knows what happened. I had to get my pool gal to go over there and get it back running and make it look beautiful so that we could list it and get it sold. And then the other big hurdle we had was the fridge. When I tell you, she up and left, she up and left, as she should. There's no let me think about what I'm taking and what I'm not. Let me clean out the fridge and not. So the power had been turned off for a while before she got it turned back on for us to get all this work done, and the everything had been left in the fridge. So these cleaners were really difficult about it, and they were like just trying to be complicated. And finally, I was like, just if you're gonna charge a fee, charge a fee, but get it done. Get it done. Just get it done. Chunk all, put a mask on and get it done. So, anyhow, once again, those burdens were mine to bear and for my client not to have a say-so in. She didn't need to know, she didn't have to know. So ultimately, after about a month and a half or so of getting everybody in and out working on the property, getting it back right, we were able to get it listed. And then came the next round of how do I handle this scenario? In this situation, you don't have to disclose on a listing that somebody passed away in the property. However, if you have knowledge of it and an agent or client asks you about it, then you have to get permission from the seller and disclose that. I don't have to say any more than that though, right? I don't have to tell details or why or how or what. But yeah, that was the next phase of hush, how do I handle this and not upset my seller? This is such a vulnerable situation. And we did have several agents call saying, Hey, did someone pass away in this home? And part of it is because there was a news article and just part of the address was there. So it was like playing puzzle pieces, right? So thankfully, the agent that actually went through and had the buyer for the house, like they did ask, and he was like, they don't really care, they just are curious, they want to know, like going in the door. And so we disclosed to them, and sometimes people have some interesting things that they are all right with or not all right with. But anyhow, he came through for us and we honestly did okay. The property was listed at 119.5 originally, and we sold it for 115. Now you're probably saying, Brittany, 119, like you can't get anything under $200,000 now. This was back in 2019 before the COVID bubble, right? And this was a detitled mobile home. So there wasn't as much value to be had there, and the comps just were what they were at this point in time. Like that's this house would probably go for over $200,000 now, which isn't which is interesting. But it also wasn't incredibly updated either, right? So there were some things, and then the bedrooms were painted girly colors. We were not gonna go back in and just re-haul everything. So yeah, there there was a couple things that we had to work through, and they were fine with having it priced appropriately just to get it sold, like she said, as long as she could get out from underneath the bed. But this is another big scenario that I want to talk about. This is where like we should have better better protocols and situations in place. After he passed, she was trying to make the mortgage payments, and she didn't have access to any of the information to log on to the online portal for the mortgage, right? If she could have, then she probably could have handled everything online, nobody would have known any different, which is a shame, right? It's a shame that if you just have a basic username and login information, like you could probably get away with being able to do anything you needed to. But as a spouse, you're calling this company saying, Hey, my husband has died and I need to make a mortgage payment. And they're literally telling you, I will not tell you any information. What? She has the death certificate, she has the marriage certificate, she's willing to send all that information over. They will not communicate with her. They literally told her just to send in a check and do the best she could. That is unacceptable, my friends. That needs to be fixed. We need to do better. There has to be a way. And these people were in their mid-twenties, early to mid-20s. This is not a scenario where there was all these plans and could have had passed down information, and this was not a plan scenario, right? So, what are we supposed to do to help and protect our family members when something like this happens? I feel like she had all the right documentation and she was willing to prove that, and that should have been enough, right? But it was set up paperless, so there was no mortgage statement coming to the house. They're not going to send a mortgage statement to the house just because she asks for it, and they're not going to even tell her how much is owed on the property or what the payment is. Just send some money. I cannot imagine how disheartening that is in that moment, right? You have lost your person, and now somebody's treating you like you don't even have rights or that you weren't even a part of that person's life, that you couldn't control the same things. And if he had deployed, they would have had a general power of attorney, and she would have had access to all of that, no problem. It is so messed up in the scenario that she had to jump through all of these hoops and battles to figure out what the heck to do. So she literally did exactly what they said. She just sent a check for what she thought was right and uh did her best. And so she told me, she said, Brittany, I have no idea what I'm gonna owe on this property. I have no idea if I'm paying the right amount. So we did the best we could with it, right? And ultimately, the attorney was able to get the payoff and the information before us, which is also insane, right? This attorney was not linked to the member, is literally just our real estate closing attorney. And as soon as they submitted a payoff document with her signature on it and a copy of the death certificate, then all of a sudden everything works. No, that's not okay. So, anyhow, that is something that I I don't want to have to prepare anybody for, but I wish people understood is like when we don't have additional contacts on things or additional approved people, it really gets super difficult to know what to do in some of these scenarios because somebody else sitting behind a screen just simply doesn't know how to handle it and they don't, they won't. And that makes things incredibly hard. And this is why I'm sure there's so many people that just drop a property and leave it, and they're just like, I don't, my hands are tied, I don't know what to do, so I'm just walking away with whether it's going to hurt them or not. And that's a shame. That is such a shame. So we've got to figure out ways to help support these families whenever they're going through hardships like this, right? So even say this wasn't the scenario, like maybe he had passed away from overseas, maybe he passed away in a car accident, any of that. It all would have been the same scenario. So this doesn't have to be this scenario. Just think about every day. We see all the time, unfortunately, in the news that people pass away in car accidents and accidents at work or whatever have you. What if their spouse was not on the mortgage? Are they in the same boat? Are these companies literally saying, I'm not going to talk to you? I will not help you with your mortgage. Good luck. Keeping a roof over your head? That's insanity. So I would like love to know if you've been through a scenario with this or help someone through a scenario with this. What did you do? How did you work around that? Did the companies communicate with you? Was there an extra step you had to take? Because heaven forbid I ever have to deal with this again on any scope. I want to know how I can serve my clients best and give them the best advice to be like, nope, you should be able to do X, Y, and Z competently, right? So that was really difficult. Really difficult. And sometimes it's also very difficult in these scenarios because the communication is not ideal. And I have this in a current scenario too. I have an estate that I need to list. And the family member that is associated with it, they're just done. They don't want to be at the property, they don't want to think about the property, they don't want to have to handle anything at the property. And unfortunately, they got to do a few things for me. Otherwise, I can't do anything else. And it's the same thing here. She was just done and didn't want to deal with it. She didn't want to think about it, didn't want to talk about it. Reasonably, but there was a couple of times where we had to get things done. And in this scenario, I tried to protect her to the best of my ability. Most of my contractors were amazing about the fact that they would wait until closing to get paid. So she did not pay for anything out of pocket up front. If something had to be paid up front, I paid for it. And that was mainly like getting the lawn done. But outside of keeping the utilities on that house and making the payments to the house, I took care of everything else. I made sure that my contractors knew we would get them paid at closing, or I paid them and then got paid back at closing. I tried so hard to not bring any other information to the table that she didn't need to know or didn't want to know, and to protect her and just to make it right to the best of my ability. So I happen to know that this lovely lady and her beautiful children are thriving. I still get to watch them on social media growing and doing things. And I'm so proud that she has been able to be strong and to continue to be a wonderful mom to her babies, and that the girls are thriving. They were so little, like they were five and three years old. The twins were three. And that is like not anything that anyone should have to go through. And they're always going to know what happened. And that was one of the things that the mom said to me was like, I wish people would be more respectful before they would just do things. Remember, I told you there was an article with part of the address on there. That article had the spouse's name in there, the husband's name. And my kids one day are gonna be able to Google this and see the article on their dad. How do I protect them from that? How hard is that? Can you imagine being that person sitting there going, my children are gonna find out that their dad chose to leave them and that it was public to the whole wide world? That was the only thing she cared about. She wanted that article to be gone, and she wished that they would have never published that. She didn't have any say-so in it, and that's a shame. So if there's two things that I wish in these scenarios could be different or better, that would be it. There needs to be better ways of what are our next steps for communication with like utilities and property taxes and the mortgage, how do people handle that seamlessly so that we don't have a lapse in coverage or we don't have any more hardships? And two, how do we protect these families so that information is not just out to the world for these children to find later in life and bring up all of this hurt and trauma and guilt all over again? So if you that hit me hard. I just can't imagine. I don't know if anything it just made me start thinking like, has anything ever been posted about him? And we've never gone looking for it, right? But goodness, his kids are teenagers and adults now. So, anyhow, if you are ever involved in a situation like this, I hope you can handle it with grace and kindness and truly honor the family where they're at. So just know it's heavy, right? It's heavy for everybody involved. But I am so proud and thankful that I took this step to honor her and protect her and do the best that I could to make sure that she and her family could move forward and not let this be detrimental to their lives, not let this be something that was going to pull them down and hold them down for forever. So if you ever get in a scenario like this and you need a little bit of help navigating it, or you need a little pep talk of should I help, reach out to me and I will support you and love on you and try to be your buffer the best that I can and help you through this situation or scenario. People need to be loved when they are at their lowest, and that is something we get to offer to them. So I'm going to wrap this up today because obviously I am in my feelings right now, and I can't wait to talk to you guys again soon. But yeah, just a remembrance that real estate is lovely and it is messy, and we get all of it, and that's okay. That's what we're here for. And just know that we actually really care about you when you're our clients. We love you. You are a relationship to us, and we are gonna do the best that we can for you anytime. So if you ever need me, just reach out. I'm here, friends. Hey! I just wanted to say thank you for being here and listening in on this episode of Closing Chapters with me. I truly enjoy putting this content together, and I hope that you enjoy it too. If so, could you like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you know that will enjoy it just as much as you did? Thank you so much.