The County Sold Her Home Over Unpaid Taxes and Kept the Profit. SCOTUS Wasn't Having It.

This is even more perverse, and as far as I know, perfectly legal

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-...-the-painful-blow-of-medicaid-estate-recovery

 

That isn’t as blatantly illegal as seizure without due process, actually perfectly reasonable to attempt asset recovery from an estate for services rendered. If the creditor wasn’t “the state” they would almost certainly have to be paid before transferring the deed. This is basically a situation where the woman was dirt poor but somehow managed to own a house outright, and intended to pass it free and clear to her daughter that is also dirt poor. Is a person entitled to a deed pass through?

Problem is she used some services that cost real money. Though when it’s a service for the poor, and the outcome would be putting a 76 year old out on the street, there should definitely be some common sense at play - rules. It’s probably better to just collect what you can from liquid assets, but totally exclude things like the primary residence. Moral hazards be damned. I mean some argue for zero estate tax, even for billionaires getting to pass straight through to their heirs. Seems a little f-ed up in that same country to kick someone out of their home they’d been in for 30 years and make them homeless over money owed to the state.

 

To me this seems like the government trying to recover tax credits you got for writing off your mortgage when you sell the house or student loan interest, which would never happen because those benefits are for middle class homeowners not poor people.

 

Somewhat related


Many assume that not having a will keeps land in the family. In reality, it jeopardizes ownership. David Dietrich, a former co-chair of the American Bar Association’s Property Preservation Task Force, has called heirs’ property “the worst problem you never heard of.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has recognized it as “the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss.” Heirs’ property is estimated to make up more than a third of Southern black-owned land — 3.5 million acres, worth more than $28 billion. These landowners are vulnerable to laws and loopholes that allow speculators and developers to acquire their property. Black families watch as their land is auctioned on courthouse steps or forced into a sale against their will.

Between 1910 and 1997, African Americans lost about 90% of their farmland. This problem is a major contributor to America’s racial wealth gap; the median wealth among black families is about a tenth that of white families. Now, as reparations have become a subject of national debate, the issue of black land loss is receiving renewed attention. A group of economists and statisticians recently calculated that, since 1910, black families have been stripped of hundreds of billions of dollars because of lost land. Nathan Rosenberg, a lawyer and a researcher in the group, told me, “If you want to understand wealth and inequality in this country, you have to understand black land loss.”

Heirs are rarely aware of the tenuous nature of their ownership. Even when they are, clearing a title is often an unaffordable and complex process, which requires tracking down every living heir, and there are few lawyers who specialize in the field. Nonprofits often pick up the slack. The Center for Heirs’ Property Preservation, in South Carolina, has cleared more than 200 titles in the past decade, almost all of them for African-American families, protecting land valued at nearly $14 million. Josh Walden, the center’s chief operating officer, told me that it had mapped out a hundred thousand acres of heirs’ property in South Carolina. He said that investors hoping to build golf courses or hotels can target these plots. “We had to be really mindful that we didn’t share those maps with anyone, because otherwise they’d be a shopping catalogue,” he told me. “And it’s not as if it dries up. New heirs’ property is being created every day.”

This kind of tax sale has a long history in the dispossession of heirs’ property owners. In 1992, the NAACP accused local officials of intentionally inflating taxes to push out black families on Daufuskie, a South Carolina sea island that has become one of the hottest real-estate markets on the Atlantic coast. Property taxes had gone up as much as 700% in a single decade. “It is clear that the county has pursued a pattern of conduct that disproportionately displaces or evicts African-Americans from Daufuskie, thereby segregating the island and the county as a whole,” the NAACP wrote to county officials. Nearby Hilton Head, which as recently as two decades ago comprised several thousand acres of heirs’ property, now, by one estimate, has a mere 200 such acres left. Investors fly into the county each October to bid on tax-delinquent properties in a local gymnasium.

Their Family Bought Land One Generation After Slavery. The Reels Brothers Spent Eight Years in Jail for Refusing to Leave It.

 

Obviously that statement is a matter of Minnesota law but it still struck me as so odd because the property owner's right to surplus proceeds in the regular foreclosure is very well defined under Florida law. From what I can tell on a very brief search, that could not happen under Florida law. I did not do enough research to really confirm the point but I'm pretty sure it would not be permitted under Florida law

 

That’s pretty remarkable. The appeals court was unanimous one way, and SCOTUS the other. For once, finally, SCOTUS got it right.

 

This is very common. People that have money and know the system set up certain types of trusts and navigate the rules which are complicated. Others have no idea. Sometimes the result can seem unfair, but it is perfectly legal. It is really important to get an elder law lawyer involved if there is Medicaid and transfer of property involved.

We just qualified for SSI and Medicaid for our adult son. There are a whole host of hoops one has to avoid that can blow your benefits out of the water. I’ve spent a fair amount of time over the last few years redoing our estate plans to accommodate such benefits in the future. There are certain types of accounts and trusts that exempt assets from being counted against Medicaid which is good, but with some of those Medicaid has the right to “clawback” assets in those instances after the Medicaid beneficiary death.

 

Thanks. That clarifies matters

 

Even this awful SCOTUS is capable of a good decision every now and then.

 

If you think that's messed up, take a look at Florida's child support system. It's so, so bad. Predatory, violative of people's rights, and willing to harm the families who are supposed to benefit from the child support.