I mean, he plainly explained that there’s a son bogging down the estate over the house. He might have said “worthless” but I’m sure it’s more like some land value and essentially zero structure value, so they might want to get a few thousand, while he blocks that transaction holding out for ten-fold. He also asserts the county tax assessments are not consistent with market value, and I think most people who have dealt with tax assessments can relate to the disconnect between realistic market value and tax assessment, one way or the other.
Or even if they did say “fine, you know what, take the property and we’ll take the rest and you can deal with trying to extract the value you think there is”, if he doesn’t agree to that you can’t really force it short of fully disclaiming yourself out of the entire estate. So if the man had $200k in other assets, then that would be an expensive thing to forfeit for the sake of not dealing with a busted house on a bit of land.
It’s a common problem with estates though even if 4/5 people want to sell it for whatever they can get, that 1 person can keep it in limbo for a very long time. If there wasn’t a will or trust that explicitly gave someone power (and even if there is in some cases), a few years of nothing happening isn’t actually outside the norm.
The house is, the land does have some value even after demolition costs. Basically uncle thinks it’s worth 200,000. In reality it’s worth 40,000, maybe a bit less.
Also my parents have their trailer (does not belong to the estate) on the property. They’d love to settle it, but 1 party refuses.
This plan would actually make my parents homeless as they can’t afford to purchase anything else or rent anywhere near where they live. If they could at least divide the proceeds of the land sale they might be able to afford something. This proposed tax would break them
Based on my experience, you managed to described like every rural estate situation I’ve ever seen. Household living in a trailer towed onto their parents land. That household probably doing a lot to take care of their parents. Then the parents die and suddenly some relative no one has heard from in decades comes along to really screw things up, often from an urban area with zero concept of the market realities of a poorly mantained house on rural land.
I get the whole “hoarding sucks” but it’s really only an urban problem. Go to a rural area and you can find plenty of housing stock for cheap.
I imagine the options would be to pay the tax or just, I dunno, get rid of the property? You said it’s worthless.
I mean, he plainly explained that there’s a son bogging down the estate over the house. He might have said “worthless” but I’m sure it’s more like some land value and essentially zero structure value, so they might want to get a few thousand, while he blocks that transaction holding out for ten-fold. He also asserts the county tax assessments are not consistent with market value, and I think most people who have dealt with tax assessments can relate to the disconnect between realistic market value and tax assessment, one way or the other.
Or even if they did say “fine, you know what, take the property and we’ll take the rest and you can deal with trying to extract the value you think there is”, if he doesn’t agree to that you can’t really force it short of fully disclaiming yourself out of the entire estate. So if the man had $200k in other assets, then that would be an expensive thing to forfeit for the sake of not dealing with a busted house on a bit of land.
It’s a common problem with estates though even if 4/5 people want to sell it for whatever they can get, that 1 person can keep it in limbo for a very long time. If there wasn’t a will or trust that explicitly gave someone power (and even if there is in some cases), a few years of nothing happening isn’t actually outside the norm.
Sadly, even with a will it can take years to resolve ownership of property after a death.
The house is, the land does have some value even after demolition costs. Basically uncle thinks it’s worth 200,000. In reality it’s worth 40,000, maybe a bit less.
Also my parents have their trailer (does not belong to the estate) on the property. They’d love to settle it, but 1 party refuses.
This plan would actually make my parents homeless as they can’t afford to purchase anything else or rent anywhere near where they live. If they could at least divide the proceeds of the land sale they might be able to afford something. This proposed tax would break them
Based on my experience, you managed to described like every rural estate situation I’ve ever seen. Household living in a trailer towed onto their parents land. That household probably doing a lot to take care of their parents. Then the parents die and suddenly some relative no one has heard from in decades comes along to really screw things up, often from an urban area with zero concept of the market realities of a poorly mantained house on rural land.
I get the whole “hoarding sucks” but it’s really only an urban problem. Go to a rural area and you can find plenty of housing stock for cheap.