Not a Gold Mine, Wallace Tells Parents

ROCKLIN, Calif. —  When Steve Wallace signed with the San Francisco 49ers in 1986, he bought his parents a $179,000 home in a picturesque Atlanta suburb.

The football player’s salary has quintupled to $465,000 this season, but he’s pulling tight on the purse strings.

He’s stopping the $1,426-a-month mortgage payment.

“Mother, father: Here is the notice from the (mortgage company),” he said in a notarized letter to his parents in May. “The house will soon foreclose. Sorry. Take care. Steve Wallace.”

Once Napoleon and Marion Wallace got over the shock, they filed a lawsuit July 3 in an effort to keep the payments coming. Wallace countersued, alleging that his parents had harassed him and caused him unnecessary expense.

“The countersuit was a tactic to make them know that I’m serious,” Wallace said.

His parents, without much elaboration, traced the feud to their son’s getting married in 1987. Wallace’s wife, Vassar, didn’t like the house and wouldn’t enter it after they married, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Wednesday.

“We’ve been hurt pretty bad,” Wallace’s mother told the newspaper. “They will mess up our credit we worked for all our lives. I’m getting older, and his father is getting older, and we just can’t let them foreclose on our house and let them mess up our lives.”

She said her son insisted on buying his parents the house in Stone Mountain, Ga.

Five months later, he got married and moved from Georgia to San Francisco, where real estate prices are far higher. He bought a 1,600-square-foot condominium, less than half the size of his parents’ dream home.

“I didn’t feel good about it,” Wallace said. “I felt I was working more for my parents than for myself.”

Napoleon Wallace is a 25-year employee of General Motors. His wife said she has stopped working because of her health. They said their son knew they could not afford the house or pay the mortgage.

“If they foreclose, my clients will be out on the street,” said their attorney, Gary Harris.

Wallace conceded that the mortgage payments could fit into his budget.

“I don’t think it will kill me,” Wallace said, “because I love my parents and I want to make the time we have on this earth enjoyable. The only thing I want is to let me live my life and stop hanging on. Don’t treat me like I’m some type of gold mine that you dip into every now and then.”