Posted on 07/15/2007 3:28:23 PM PDT by BBell
In 1996, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office mailed a paltry $1.63 property tax bill for the Slidell-area home of Kermit and Dolores Atwood that never reached its destination.
The seemingly innocuous, misaddressed bill was the start of a bizarre legal ordeal that threatens to leave the elderly couple homeless and now stands at the door of the state Supreme Court.
The chain of events that followed the wayward property tax bill, including the eventual sale of the home at a sheriff's tax sale, is described by Dolores Atwood as "seven years of emotional hell."
"I don't know how much more I can endure," said Atwood, 69, while sitting in a FEMA trailer in front of her Katrina-ravaged brick home on Dauphine Street, just north of Slidell.
"I wake up in the middle of the night, and it's on my mind," she said. "All this should have never happened."
But it did, all because of the $1.63 tax bill that Atwood and her husband, Kermit, never received. And they still face the threat of losing their property because of the bill, which was mailed to a defunct address in late 1996 and returned undelivered to the Sheriff's Office.
The couple cling to the hope that recent state court decisions, which say their home should never have been put up for a tax sale, withstand further appeals by a land company tenaciously pursuing a lawsuit to obtain the property.
The Atwoods' nightmare began when they learned in 2000 that their four-bedroom, two-bath home had been sold in 1997 through a tax sale for the $1.63 in unpaid taxes, plus 10 cents interest and $125 in costs associated with the sale.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.nola.com ...
This is unbelievable. Someone thought they had a deal buying a house and land for $126.73.
These poeple are the lowest form of predatory scum! They really need an "Come to Sopranos" moment to make them see clearly.
I find it hard to believe that they had never been issued a summons or some other notification of the impending sheriff’s sale. Around here it takes a lot to get to that point. There’s a lot here where the owner supposedly died in Viet Nam and taxes haven’t been paid since.
This democrat party insider tax scam is common, but rarely so blatant.
LOL! How is that for a rule-based answer to this farce.
You are all heart, Mr. Lindsay.
What I do not understand about this story is why the couple owed any tax at all. From the article:
The house, which the couple has owned mortgage-free since 1968, previously was totally state homestead exempt, meaning there was no tax bill, Atwood said. The couple's mailing address during that time changed from a rural route and mailbox number to 4122 Dauphine St. because of the implementation of the parish's 911 emergency phone system. The tax bill mailed to the rural route address was returned as undeliverable to the Sheriff's Office which, after advertisements of delinquent taxes in the parish's legal journal, put the property on the auction block.
Did the address change remove the homestead exemption?
what I want to know is how the sherriff’s office who are the primary users of the new addresses implemented because of the 911 system was unable to put the correct address on the bill in the first place...
Good point. The incident does not inspire confidence in the sheriff, the 911 system, or government in general.
It's about power and control.
This article makes it clear.
Yeah. They didn’t even know they owed $1.63 on a debt-free property since 1968 and never had to pay property taxes before. Disgusting, what a bunch of greedy, amoral bastards.
I was intending on buying some property in Wyoming through James Land Co, but will never deal with them. They’ve now lost any commission from me.
Every facet of government can seem to find a tax delinquent in the blink of an eye but they can’t find 12 to 20 million ILLEGALS! BS!
“It’s not about money.
It’s about power and control.
This article makes it clear.”
Well if you have the money you have the power and the control.
“Every facet of government can seem to find a tax delinquent in the blink of an eye but they can’t find 12 to 20 million ILLEGALS! BS!”
No kidding.
Do you think Jamie Land Co and James Land Co are the same?
Maybe it’s a husband and wife team.
It sounds to easy here to sell someone’s house and land out from under them. I agree with you, you’d think they would have to post a notice on their door or at least track the owners down through existing files at the court house.
After my mother died in another state, I found out that the county tax authority had told the Post Office not to forward their tax bills. When I put the house up for sale with a real estate company, the salesman called back in a couple of days and asked if I knew that the house was going to be sold for taxes! He paid the taxes that day.
I went through something similar for “unpaid school taxes” in Bastrop County Texas -— unpaid because of incompetent appraisal officials, their joke of appraisal board leadership and their greedy and reprehensible legal representatives. I would have gladly given them the property except for the process that had to be followed to do so. If I lived in either Bastrop or Fayette County Texas, I would be as big a thorn as I possibly could be in my dealings with them.
“The incident does not inspire confidence in the sheriff, the 911 system, or government in general.”
Last year a couple of county police officers showed up at my door claiming to have had a “911 hang-up” from a phone supposedly listed to my address in their Enhanced 911 system. Neither of us had been near the phone and I’d never heard of the number he quoted as being mine.
Somebody somewhere might have been in serious trouble and not gotten any help.
The government needs to get this settled, at no cost to the elderly couple. If they, the government, has to cough up a settlement with the current land owner leach, then so be it. This should have never gone as far as it has. Ridiculous.
Sure it’s about money, it’s theft. Who but a greedy dishonest scumbag could buy a house and land for $126.00 and NOT know they were stealing it from this elderly couple?
You think everything is about power and control, sometimes it’s just stealing.
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