[marktwain]

Abandoned property becomes a serious problem when there is no mechanism to transfer the title to another person.

But Minnesota had a clear means to transfer title. They also had clear knowledge of who had the title and was not paying the taxes.

You are correct. This is all about what the limits of the Minnesota law is.

Many state's law is the excess value goes to the former property owner.

[Alberta's Child]

The origin of the applicable Minnesota statute is interesting, but it isn’t really relevant to this case. The only thing that matters — and this has been reaffirmed by the Federal courts — is that it’s a valid state law and applies to the situation at hand.

It doesn’t really matter whether the government knew or didn’t know how to contact the owner of the property. All that mattered was that the foreclosure process involved a series of steps (say, ten) under state law … and that after a specific step in the process (say, the eighth one), the former property owner no longer had any claim to the property because the title had already been transferred.

The courts ruled that the government didn’t sell the property to satisfy the debt. The debt had already been satisfied under my hypothetical Step 8, and the former property owner no longer had a tax debt to her name.

By the time the process got to Step 10 (the sale of the property), the government was basically just selling surplus property rather than satisfying a tax lien.

This sounds like a case that’s been brought on behalf of a negligent fool — just because some legal advocates are looking to pursue their own political/legal agenda.