You have just paid $ 10K of tuition toward your RE Doctorate…
Don’t be so hard on yoruself, and my advice to you is not to pay one dime out of your pocket to get it closed… You are taking a big enough whack on the head as it is here… I remember a long time ago… at a time when I didn’t know a thimble full of what I have learned today… and I made a mistake… It was possbily going to cost someone either time or money… and I felt obligated to pay for it… Oh, I fel bad.
A gentleman who was mentoring me along at the time said… “Wait a minute here; don’t you dare pay that”. I took his advice and didn’t, I did a little more negotiating, and made the deal work. Believe me, I learned an awful lot on that deal, and remember it like it was yesterday… (Oct of 1979). Moral of the story is you will still learn yet more in this deal, if you negotiate your way out of it, w/o paying your way out of it…
Say a few Hail Mary’s, promise to never do that again, and all will be forgiven… You are advancing your career, and a good education is neither cheap nor quick… but it is effective. Wishing you luck on a fast and painless resolution…
Posted by Kristine-CA on June 29, 2003 at 20:51:59:
Greetings all. Do child support judgements stay active forever? Even if the child is grown, etc., does one still owe it? No statute of limitations?
And of course, they probably never get settled for less, right?
Can you tell me if the judgement is agains all property that you own, similar to an IRS lien?
I have an ugly situation on my hands where I bought a property from heirs and then did the probate. As the title company is requiring me to re-do the deeds, I will now be “buying” from the heir, who has a child support judgement (and possible other judgements) in excess of the total value of the property.
I think I’m pretty screwed here, but I’m wondering if there is anything about child support in CA that I should know.
Who says you cannot negotiate down a lien? Since when was that put into the law? Of course you can try to negotiate.
Also, try to get the deadbeat parent to pungle up money to pay the lien. That is the person who is responsible.
And, of course, talk to your probate attorney friend about what could be done to save as much equity as possible out of this one.
Now, since the other attorney apparently did not do a good job getting you title, is there some prospect of getting something from his/her errors and ommissions insurance? This may require a consultation with an attorney specializing in sueing attorneys for malpractice and similar issues.
This answer won’t help you here, but for the next case that is similar to this one… you must anticipate all of the possibilities, such as this lien. So on the next case, what you do is your title work in advance… prior to the probating, and anyone with any liens or baggage that screws up the title, you have them disavow their inheritance… Of course this only works where the siblings (or heirs) get along and aren’t worried about one of their own sticking one somewhere painful when they aren’t looking.
The disavowal will eliminate that party (or parties) who have baggage from ever clouding the title with such issues to begin with. There are other ways of balancing equity if you are in control and they all trust YOU… and what is there NOT to trust about Kristine…? Should be a slam dunk…
Posted by Kristine-CA on June 29, 2003 at 22:45:54:
JT: you are right of course. Already have another one just like it in front me. But now I have a probate attorney. I didn’t even know what a probate attorney was last year when I bought this property. Funny to think about that now. Probate is in my everyday vocabulary now.
In the new deal I just signed up, the heirs have leins against them too. So all the heirs will be assigning their interest to me–and I’m filing the probate. Live and learn.
Ah, but it hurts. I bought the problem property last year for a total of $1500.00 to the heirs. Spent 1K on attorneys. There is a 4K tax debt. And I sold it for $16.5. Would have been an ok deal. And wouldn’t you know, the child support lien will use up every last dollar of equity. I would walk from it, or solve it a different way, but my buyer has already lease/optioned it to someone and cleaned it up. My mistake. I was so sure the title issue was solved after my attorney prepared an affidavit (that absolutely did not fly–not with title people and not with the county). So the probate was done ass-backwards. And took another 4 months. My mistake. However, I don’t know how I could have learned what I learned any other way.
I learned a ton and these kinds of deals are all around me now. My only concern is that I may have to bring funds to the closing if anymore liens show up on this one. But it’s the only honorable thing I can think to do here. I can’t back out. The buyer is a good investor buyer and has bought other things from me. And it’s not his problem that I screwed this up.