Read that this morning Jim. It should be used sparingly though. There is usually a drop in income when people retire, so debt then takes up a larger percentage of a persons income. Being obligated to a bank for basically the rest of a persons life is not a good situation to be in. I can imagine the Joe Duffy shows now..."my mum is still paying her mortgage at 85. We didn't think we'd have to pay it for that long, even though we signed up to an agreement for payments to age 90. We thought they'd let her off at some stage."
I see that in this case, they didn't really have much of an option and that is when it should be used. It should be a last resort.