abandoned house, impoverished widow, legal treatment of
phillysleuth
keep their house. They received notice from mortgage company the same
year that a lock would be placed on the house within a certain # of
days, so they packed up and moved to their nearby daughter's house
(who was living elsewhere at the time) and paid her rent (considerably
less than the house payments, which were already substantially in
arrears). I'm not sure of the exact move out date.
A fall out with the daughter caused them to move to a different house
in 2009, just as the husband goes into hospice and dies . The wife is
left with numerous final expenses for him, and then has multiple
surgeries and rehab expenses for herself, and ongoing medical
problems. She gets nothing but Social Security, which doesn't cover
even her current expenses. She gets food stamps and has applied for
Medicaid. She has many credit card debts which are in collections
also. It appears that they (she) never got a formal foreclosure
notice other than the notice of locking the house, until now, although
whether it just got lost during the moves is anyone's guess. She now
has a notice to appear in court to answer some code violation charges
(which she could not afford to remedy) for the abandoned house, which
I assume are connected with the related foreclosure hearing to be held
at the same time in the first week of March.
It is impossible for me to know exactly what documents the widow
has,since we live hundreds of miles apart, and she is confused and
imprecise at best, but it is safe to assume they are incomplete. I
would like to know what is likely to happen in a case like this, where
they acknowlege abandonning a property, but the remaining owner has no
money and little documentation. She is extremely intimidated by
authority figures, and should have legal representation, but I doubt
that she can find any free legal aid (near Port Charlotte, if that
matters) before March 2, the hearing date. She has no family or
friends to help in any significant way, financially or otherwise. Is
there any general legal principle that applies to abandoned property
subject to foreclosure, with the owner impoverished and ill? Can her
social security payments be garnished? Can any other legal action be
applied to her? (The couple had already gone thru one bankruptcy and
I believe there is some rule about how often you can do that, and I'm
not even sure if it is relevant to this situation).
I know nothing about foreclosure law, whether it is state specific,
or whether the financial status of the mortgage holder matters, so I
would really appreciate feedback. My gut reaction, which certainly
isn't a qualified legal opinion, is that she has nothing so they can't
take it away from her, and that at her age and medical condition, they
aren't likely to put in her in jail. She is close to a breakdown over
this.
Thanks,
jo
wuffa
> In 2008 a senior Florida couple (she is now 72) ran out of money to
> keep their house. They received notice from mortgage company the same
> year that a lock would be placed on the house within a certain # of
> days, so they packed up and moved to their nearby daughter's house
> (who was living elsewhere at the time) and paid her rent (considerably
> less than the house payments, which were already substantially in
> arrears). I'm not sure of the exact move out date.
>
> A fall out with the daughter caused them to move to a different house
> in 2009, just as the husband goes into hospice and dies . The wife is
> left with numerous final expenses for him, and then has multiple
> surgeries and rehab expenses for herself, and ongoing medical
> problems. She gets nothing but Social Security, which doesn't cover
> even her current expenses. She gets food stamps and has applied for
> Medicaid. She has many credit card debts which are in collections
> also. It appears that they (she) never got a formal foreclosure
> notice other than the notice of locking the house, until now, although
> whether it just got lost during the moves is anyone's guess. She now
> has a notice to appear in court to answer some code violation charges
> (which she could not afford to remedy) for the abandoned house, which
> I assume are connected with the related foreclosure hearing to be held
> at the same time in the first week of March.
in your post you say
"She gets nothing but Social Security, which doesn't cover
even her current expenses. She gets food stamps and has applied for
Medicaid"
And that she is 72.
given that she should also go apply for Medicare ( not the same as
Medicaid)
also her social security payments can not be garnished.
slide
>Can her
> social security payments be garnished?
Nothing in your OP would indicate to me that her SS benefits can be
garnished. Here are the only cases where it can be:
# Section 459 of the Act (42 U.S.C. 659) allows Social Security benefits
to be garnished to enforce child support and/or alimony obligations;
# Section 6334 (c) of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. 6334 (c))
allows benefits to be levied to collect unpaid Federal taxes;
# Section 3402 (P) of the Internal Revenue Code allows beneficiaries to
elect to have a percentage of their benefits withheld and paid to the
Internal Revenue Service to satisfy their Federal income tax liability
for the current year;
# The Debt Collection Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-134) allows benefits
to be withheld and paid to another Federal agency to pay a non-tax debt
the beneficiary owes to that agency: and
# The Tax Payer Relief Act of 1997 (Public Law 105-34) authorizes the
Internal Revenue Service to collect overdue federal tax debts of
beneficiaries by levying up to 15 percent of each monthly payment until
the debt is paid.
Based on what you say, none of these conditions apply.
As to the other, I suggest you at least give a shot to getting her legal
representation by YOU calling Legal Aid at (941) 505-9007 if she is too
timid. Generally speaking, our legal system demands that one asserts her
rights or the system will just run over you. If she remains too
mouse-like to cooperate with the Legal Aid (assuming you can secure
same), she's toast.
phillysleuth
To all those who suggest she get legal aid, or I get it for her, there
was no time before at least one of the documents has to be responded
to. I only asked opinions because I thought it might guide me in
guiding her. There's no point in going into the family details,
which are about as atrocious as you can get. I have been as directive
as I could about getting legal aid, and she waited too long. After
trying to get me to write up what she should say at the court hearing,
which I refused to do because I have my own problems, she found a
lawyer-- probably out of the phone book --- and he either will or
won't give her probono service or a discounted rate. Not determining
this upfront is standard for her. She has a small amount of money
left from her husband's insurance, which was supposed to extend her
time living in her current rental but is just about exhausted, and she
will just have to use this if the lawyer charges her the maximum
quoted ($250) for the 15-30 minutes she spent with him yesterday.
His advice: walk away from both issues. He didn't even recommend
writing a letter of explanation, but apparently conveyed the same
impression you all have given: that she can't be assessed for money
she doesn't have. The insurance is not even in her name; knowing how
she is, her husband left it to his sister-in-law and she has been
doling it out for her medical and other expenses. It was $25K and
she's run thru all but a couple of thousand this year. After it's
gone, which will be within a few months, she will probably end up in a
nursing home and on (more) public assistance because her adult
children are of no help, financially or otherwise.
Are there repercussions if she follows the lawyer's advice and just
doesn't respond to the notices? She said he promised to get her out
of jail if they arrested her for not bringing the house up to code,
for what that's worth. What happens when a house is foreclosed on but
the owner never answer the notices?
Please don't come down on me for not pushing her further in the
direction of getting proper representation, on any front... legal,
financial, etc. I've been trying for 8 years.. She listens to what I
say and then does whatever reduces her anxiety at the moment for the
most part, and there is always another crisis on the horizon. I
can't alter the terrible choices she made starting when she was 17,
not can I change the fact that she is both severely physically and
emotionally challenged. This is her history and I have done the best
I could to give practical help and support, but the patterns and
situations are much too entangled and entrenched for anyone to have
much impact on her life now. It's Jerry Springer stuff, and while
sometimes it distracts me from my own stuff, I have to cut her off
periodically, as most of her "friends" have done. You can listen to
someone's victimization stories only so much, you know? Someone that
old raised to expect abuse usually finds a way to draw it to her in
one form or another.
nos...@isp.com
: phillysleuth wrote:
:
:: < A seventy-two year old, financially assetless, and
:: exclusively social security payments supported widow
:: who voluntarily vacated her former Fla. residence
:: three years ago after she defaulted on and no longer
:: could afford to pay her mortgage has a notice to
:: appear in court to answer some code violation charges
:: for the residence she abandoned and, besides being
:: unable to afford to remedy whatever are the alleged
:: violations the OP does not identify, she is confused and
:: and frightened. >
:
: * * *
: Social security payments cannot be garnished -- but that's really
: beside the point. Code violations are often (misdemeanor) criminal
: charges. The city may offer to drop the charges if she brings the
: property into code compliance (i.e., fixes the house). But this is
: probably not a money issue from the city's perspective. The city
: probably just wants the problems fixed, and doesn't care how she
: gets it done.
: * * *
: [T]hey are also not likely to drop the case just because she is a
: little old lady. She needs to DEAL with the problem. If the case
: is to have any chance of going away, someone will have to contact
: the prosecutor and give him/her reasons to drop it. You have
: apparently volunteered to help, so google "pro bono legal aid" for
: her area and start making calls.
These are sensible comments, as far as they go. But a core premise of
the OP is that the widow in question is emotionally, intellectually,
and financially unwilling or unable to DEAL with the problem as,
meanwhile, the OP solicits little more than legal theorizing
oxymoronically based, however, on what the OP says is ignorance of the
operative facts.
Additionally, on the basis of only the OP's avowedly factually vague
statements ("it's anyone's guess" etc.), which include the OP saying
merely that the former resident "has a notice to appear" (the OP also
not having made clear that that person ever was or still is actually
the property's record owner regardless what the notice she received
from a local governmental agency may say), so that, especially in
penal or quasi-penal law terms and possibilities, one cannot tell from
the OP how or when that notice was delivered or what the violations
are claimed to be or whether it is a penal or quasi-penal notice. To
the contrary, this, too, the OP leaves to anybody's - or at least to
the OP's readers' - guesses. It therefore is impossible reasonably to
determine (or even guess) as a practical matter that the on balance
probably short-term and also long-term least ineffective way for the
widow to deal with the problem is to ignore the notice.
What is not reasonable is that, despite the OP's stated desire to try
to be helpful, the OP does not say that poster has reached out for
advice from any Fla. state or local elder services agencies or any
legal services agencies near where the widow in question now resides
even though presumably these resources are easily locatable via Google
or Yahoo or Bing, etc., and, for that matter, in the area's hard-copy
telephone directories.
slide
[a good deal more detail]
>
> Are there repercussions if she follows the lawyer's advice and just
> doesn't respond to the notices? She said he promised to get her out
> of jail if they arrested her for not bringing the house up to code,
> for what that's worth. What happens when a house is foreclosed on but
> the owner never answer the notices?
There is nothing anybody can offer from this far away which would be
superior advice to her hired lawyer who is on the scene and personally
advising her on this matter. The only element which bothers me slightly
is you seem to be getting what he said through her which may not be
entirely accurate, but it's as good as you can do also.
There is the overriding aspect that given she's an 'empty pocket' there
probably isn't that much motive in going after her hard. What would be
the point?
>
> Please don't come down on me for not pushing her further in the
> direction of getting proper representation, on any front... legal,
> financial, etc. I've been trying for 8 years..
[claims behavior mod is only temporary]
Recognize your limits here as in all other places. Measure your
performance by your having done the most you could rather than the
outcome isn't optimal by your standards. Let it rest.
>
>
Barry Gold
> Are there repercussions if she follows the lawyer's advice and just
> doesn't respond to the notices? She said he promised to get her out
> of jail if they arrested her for not bringing the house up to code,
> for what that's worth. What happens when a house is foreclosed on but
> the owner never answer the notices?
If it's just a foreclosure, they will sell the house for whatever it
will bring at auction. If that's not enough to cover the debt(*), then
in some cases they can demand that she pay the difference. THat's
called a "deficiency judgment." But there are limits -- both Federal
and state -- on what they can do to collect that. In particular: they
can't take her Social Security payments, as long as she keeps them in a
bank account separate from any other money she owns.
Here are some things they might do:
1. Call her up (but the FDCPA limits the times they can call, and it's
not that hard to set up an answering machine so you can screen your calls).
2. Send her dunning letters.
3. Take any private money she has (outside of SS). But Federal and
state Bankruptcy laws specify that some minimal amount of money and
other assets are exempt from seizure. You can see a partial list at
http://www.thebankruptcysite.org/exemptions/federal.html
4. Notify the credit bureaus that she has an unpaid debt.
Now, if she's being accused of civil code violations, it's possible that
they might charge her with a crime. But nothing you've said so far
suggests that. If it were a possibility, it should be mentioned in the
letters she's been receiving, with a direct cite to the applicable code
sections. Once you have that, you can Google for your state's code
(e.g., California civil code), and then look up the law for yourself.
But I think you're right about limiting your involvement in this. When
somebody won't help themselves, there's very little that anybody else
can do to help them.(*)
(*) Unless they are so bad that you can get a court to declare them
incompetent. Then a "conservator of the person" will be appointed to
take care of her remaining assets. This is an extreme last step, and I
don't recommend it unless the person is completely unable to care for
themselves. First of all, it gets you into an adversary proceeding with
the person you're trying to help, which will not make them feel good
about you. Second, you will almost certainly need a lawyer, which will
cost more money. Third, unless you are capable of doing the management
yourself, the court will appoint a professional conservator. At best,
these charge a fee to manage the assets. At worst... some of them have
been known to steal the assets they are supposed to be protecting.