PORTLAND – A disabled 65-year-old woman and her daughter are embroiled in a lawsuit over who owns the family cabin in Bethel the mother says is rightfully hers.

Nancy Kimball is challenging her daughter Christina Kimball in Oxford County Superior Court seeking possession of the small cabin. The mother says her late husband intended for the cabin to be hers, but that her daughter forced her from the home and into a ceramics studio on the property that does not have a kitchen or a bathtub.

“She was supposed to make sure I had a place to live. She was not supposed to evict me,” she said. “She just wanted everything right now, right this minute.”

Through her attorney, Christina Kimball denied that she did anything wrong and charges that her mother has no legal basis to take back the house.

The courts have not made a final decision, but a judge did take control of the house until the matter is resolved after finding that Nancy Kimball is likely to win.

Nancy and Dale Kimball lived most of their married life in Atlanta, where Dale worked as a diesel engineer for UPS. When he retired in 1999, they moved to a cabin across the road from his boyhood home in Bethel.

In May 2002, Dale learned that he had terminal cancer and was given 18 months to live. He was concerned for his wife, who is disabled with rheumatoid arthritis.

Dale Kimball transferred ownership of the cabin to a joint tenancy with Christina Kimball, who still lived in Georgia, with the understanding that Christina would move to Maine when her father died and live in the house with her mother, Nancy Kimball said.

If Nancy Kimball’s arthritis became so serious that she would have to go to a nursing home, the intention was that the house would be in her daughter’s name and would not have to be sold to pay for her care.

After Dale Kimball’s death on Jan. 13, 2003, Christina Kimball and her boyfriend, Steve Goss, came to live with Nancy Kimball. But according to a court affidavit filed by Nancy Kimball, things did not work out according to plan.

Christina Kimball and Goss did not find jobs when they moved to Maine, Nancy Kimball said, and lived off her Social Security and her husband’s pension, which continued for a period after his death.

Nancy Kimball said that Goss was hostile to her and made her feel uncomfortable in her own home. In July 2004, according to the affidavit, Nancy Kimball “was shocked and heartbroken” to find that her bank accounts that had contained a $70,000 nest egg were nearly empty.

In September, Nancy Kimball suffered a stroke and spent several weeks at a rehabilitation facility. While she was there, her daughter told her that she could not come home and threatened to evict her, according to Nancy Kimball’s statement.

Nancy Kimball then moved into a ceramics studio on the property and has lived there ever since.

Christina Kimball has since moved back to Georgia and has attempted to sell the cabin. She could not be reached for comment.

Her attorney, Tom Carey, said his client disputes all of the allegations against her and Goss. Both she and Goss have submitted requests to dismiss the case, which is pending in Oxford County Superior Court.