Clarification/Follow-up by stiletto_5 on 08/26/05 9:23 am:
Hi, guys thank you so much for all of your help. You guys are awesome WOW! Even though I am responding to rickj, because there is no response option to select all your names at the same time here,I really mean all you guys..kkemper and fremontguy as well, and by the way i meant to rate you kkemper 5 stars LOL, 'cause I had clicked 4 stars by accident...sorry
Anyway, I just would like to add several more details if i may. It turns out that the so called "process serve papers" they hand gave me were nothing more than their own self-proclaimed validation of why they are writing to me in the first place. They made no mention of explicitly writing anything about taking me out to court, setting a court date, or anything like that. What they wrote near the end was to the effect: "You have 72 hours to return the remaining balance of each of the two partners's original contribution amount." What is that? An ultimatum? LOL And Their "lawyers" were not lawyers,but rather "lawyer assisted". And here are more pieces of the story.

This is what really happened, if may indulge your patience:
ok, first back in MARCH this year, my "supposed friend" who lives in N. CA with me approached me and said there is this nice house for $295,000 in Lancaster,S.CA. I'll called her F1. She has this friend down in Lancaster, friend F2. We all then agreed to partnered together and shared the cost equally on everything toward a possible house purchase. However, there was no written contract of any kind among the 3 of us from the very start. Everything we all agreed to, we agreed to verbally. So of course, no conditions and/or no stipulations were made in case something were to happened between the 3 of us. We all decided to agreed on whatever happens should the deal not go through,and we were to pay any penalty, we would divide all expenses in 3's. We decided to put down the normal 20%, or $39,000. Each of us were to put down a total of about $14,500 or so to also cover closing cost and other misc fees.

Now here are where things get interesting.
I initally put down $17,600 of my own money, because that was all I had in my savings (stupid me,heh?). Partner F1 puts down $7,600 and partner F2 puts down $4,300. F1 and F2 said that was all they could afford to put down. The difference missing from each of their down payment contribution, they said
something the difference would be part of the "carry over" that would be included in mortgage. F1 already has a few properties, and at the time, I foolishly believed she knew what she was doing to try to purchase the Lancaster property. As it turns out, the withdrawl penalty was about $6,948.00.
Since we intially verbally agreed to divide all expenses equally,and since my name was the only name on all loan,title,notary,etc papers, I then divide $6,948.00 into 3's, which comes out to $2,316 that each of us will pay out as part of the penalty. As you can see, I stand to lose the most money in all of this transaction. I am willing to forgo $2,316.00 on my part as per partner verbal agreement. So, why can't they uphold the verbal agreeement, since we all agreed to pay all expenses equally? Now, I did not have to pay F1 and F2 the remaining amount of their respective contribution money balance, because nothing was writen down to say they had given me each of their conribution money, and when added to my own contribution amount, the sum would be for the down payment, in including all escrow expenses. In good faith, I paid them the difference after deducting $2,316 from each of their contribution amount.

To top it of, after the escrow company returned the one lump check to me that I had sent out for the down payment,I wrote the check to F1 and F2 the difference or the remaining balance of their conribution money. In addition, isn't the fact that each of them already cashed their respective checks meant that they had accepted the check amount as the final say? If they had held the check and told me:" Look, we don't agreed with the check amount you sent us. We want all of it back.", then things would make more sense. However, as I've mentioned, there was no written agreement in the first place, so how can their argument stand in court? They have nothing to prove to the judge that I owed them anything, much less them wanting all of their money back. Is not what they are demanding ridculous and illegal?