Our clients Fathers estate contained multiple peices of Real Estate. During his life he had been a co-owner of several peieces of real estate along with his brothers and sisters.
Since he died intestate his share of that real estate was divided among his lineal descendents.
One of the houses the Father had owned was inherited partially from the clients grandfather, and father partially from his the clients grandmother. The other owners, his aunts and uncles, were living in the house.
Unfortunately his aunts and uncles had been neglecting the upkeep of the property. They had failed to pay property taxes, the mortage, and for common maintenance for several years.
The family members living in the house had refused to communicate with our client for many years, despite his sincere attempts to reach out. Our client was unofficailly adopted by the his father as he was a child of his mother and a former lover. While his father and mother loved him, his aunts and uncles never accepted him as part of the family.
How Bassin Law was able to help.
When our client came into our office the estates’s properties where facing forclosure. Our Real Estate Lawyers first began negotiating with his family to make the mortgage and taxpayments to remove the tax liens and prevent forclosure.
Unfotunately his family conflicts reached a head when his Aunts claimed he was not a real member of the family. This convinced our client that friendly negotations would no longer suffice. That it would be best to sell his interest in the property. Our Real estate lawyers filed a partition action to force a sale of the property.
If a piece of real property is owned by multiple people, each seperate owner has the right to file an action for partion. An aciton for Partion requires the other owners to either agree to sell the property or to pay the moving party the fair market value of their share of the real estate. Our client did not want to force a sale but his Aunts attempts to exclude him from the family made him feel it was necessary.
Strangely, The other owners failed to answer the complaint, therefore the court ruled for our client by default. The court ordered the appointment of a referee to conduct the sale of the property referee.
This case highligts the importance of communcation between litigants becuase a default can be set aside. Our clients aunt, who lived in the house, decided to hire an attorney to set aside the default. However, these efforts where in vain. The court ruled in our favor and denied the motion to set aside the default.
Our client recieved several hundred thousand dollars from the sale of the house and was able to end a difficult property ownership dispute among the family.