Posted on 05/15/2021 6:04:45 AM PDT by snarkytart
New York (CNN Business)It's been nine years since Michael Robinson of Columbus, Ohio, nearly lost a major part of his family's legacy. He's still fighting to regain full control of it.
In 2012, the 57-year-old married father of four, who is Black, found out someone he'd never met named James E. Deshler II was suing his family members to force them to sell their portion of the 127 acres of Barlow Bend, Alabama, farmland that they'd inherited from Robinson's late grandfather, Joe Ely.
The local county auditor's website determined last year that the land is worth more than $212,000. The Deshler family and its Thomasville, Alabama, attorney J. Glen Padgett did not respond to a request for comment.
"I couldn't understand it," Robinson told CNN Business. "How can someone force us to sell land that's not for sale?''
The issue was one of heirs' property, a legal term for land owned by two or more people, typically after they inherit it from a relative who didn't have a will.
Robinson said his grandfather spent $2,500 to acquire his farmland in 1941 through a US Department of Agriculture program. Joe Ely didn't have a will when he died in 1959, so control of his land was automatically divided between his 15 children.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
Relax guys. The land will have to be sold to pay the estate tax.
“land is worth more than $212,000”
So what would their share of the property tax been had they been in possession of it?
Since they weren’t paying it, they need to deduct that amount from whatever they get.
What the story carefully avoids....is that property taxes come up and if you don’t pay...there will be a point where the county judge will claim the property in the interest of the county and resell the property.
This happens a lot in Alabama. When you go and check the land’s history at the county seat you find that an 80 acre plot is made up of 20 or 30 “patches”. When they re-surveyed the land in my county a number of years ago, it was a mess. There ended up being 100’s of acres that had no owners. It’s pretty straight now.
Some Blacks may choose to go there for cultural reasons. Whites go there because they don’t have any other options.
So the range of Black student quality is going to be wider than the range of white student quality.
This doesn’t change the fact that it is a bottom tier school with a deserved low reputation. Clearly the lowest of the four Louisiana schools.
I haven’t looked at the Texas law school rankings in a while but the two lowest accredited (by far) used to be Texas Southern (Black) and St. Mary’s (targeting ‘underserved’ Hispanics. I’ve met some decent Hispanic lawyers that went to St. Mary’s, as well.
Obama gave us PigfordI and Pigford II. Biden’s Rescue Plan included provisions for disadvantaged (black) farmers debt forgiveness eligible up to 120%of $140,000.
Corey booker, Warren and Giliibrand proposed a bill giving every Disadvantaged Farmer 160 acres for free.
In 1960, when I started in first grade the property next to our farm had been tied up by the heirs for years before that. There was a beautiful old "Dutch Colonial" style antebellum mansion on the property that we explored a few times. There was a huge ballroom with metal casement windows down the whole side. I heard that the house burned to the ground a few years after I moved away. When the Saudi Prince Faisal started buying up property in Floyd County, Georgia with all that freely flowing oil money, the Ayers heirs must have decided to take the money and run. That was at least forty years that the very large acreage of property was held up in court.
The people who own it now along with our old property and antebellum mansion (restored after we lived there), is now a thriving business of a few hundred acres.
OHIO PING!
Please let me know if you want on or off the Ohio Ping list.
How John Deere is helping Black farmers and their descendants take back unjustly seized land
CNN ^ | 6:32 AM ET, Fri May 14, 2021 | Chauncey Alcorn
Posted on 5/15/2021, 9:04:45 AM by snarkytart
Sounds like generations old title issues are being smoked out to be litigated. Standard title insurance ought to cover these.
Bill gates & co own 6,001 acres near me. He could divide that up. With farm ground selling for a premium (~12,000/acre here) wanna bet what will happen to Grandpas legacy? Especially since they’ll have to pay the taxes
I have three words for Deere: Right to repair.
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