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Attorney will not return my calls
I am entitled to a distribution; an aunt left her estate to us 4 cousins. The oldest cousin out of the 4 is the executor. Our aunt died over 4 years ago.
I am interested in buying the house that is part of the estate --- it is nothing substantial, just a little 6 room one family on a single floor with a small yard and it would be ideal for me. That house was on the market for nearly 3 years, had 2 viewings and no takers. It is an older home that would need a new kitchen and new bathroom.
I've sold the home I am currently in and am looking to scale down and downsize my home.
Close for the house is start of next month on the fifth.
Here is the problem:
I met with the estate attorney at the end of May and told him I want to buy the home using my distribution. Essentially it is paid for, then!
Estate Atty told me he'd contact the executor and was sure that the executor would probably be receptive, being the house has not sold...and I heard nothing in the way of a response: okay for me to buy,. not okay, Cuz wants to leave it on the market, etc -- I got no reply.
In June I called and left Atty 2 messages, asking for an update.Estate Atty did not call me back.
At the end of June, Estate Atty did call me -- I drove the 60 miles to his office and nobody was there.
During the entire duration of this suggestion by me that I buy that home, my atty has been in the mix. This mess has been going on for 7 weeks now.
Estate Atty said to me, "Oh well I didn't know if you were selling your home. I was in question about that..."
huh??? I told him twice, when I left messages, that I close start of August. This is more or less his excuse, then, for not getting moving on me buying that house?? Looks like it.
See where this is going?
On July 1, Estate Atty told me he has to call the accountant for the estate and the executor...I asked if I could find out in a few days if it was okay for me to buy the house. I got "oh sure; no problem..." and then he vanished. Again. Did not return our calls or emails.
Until we told Estate Atty on Friday morning that we threatened to file a grievance...all of a sudden up pops Estate Atty and assures my atty that he will call the estate accountant and the executor and get an answer for me...
How do you like that....on Friday, we got the same rerun of what I was told on July 1. This guy is full of nothing but excuses.
To whit, the Estate Atty has not bothered to contact either one of us since Friday. It should have taken him 2 days tops to get the answer!
Neither has the executor bothered to contact me at any time during the last 7 weeks - I sent him a letter stating I wished to buy the home and when I close, etc...the letter went by certified mail on July 10 and yesterday it came back marked "return to sender,." Cuz didn't accept it or open it. How very strange.
I have never had a workable phone number for Cuz nor an email address. Cuz gave me one number to contact him when the estate "started" and whenever I call the number, I get an error message asking me to enter my password and mailbox number. Estate Atty hs a phone number for Cuz -- he has to. But I do not know why that working phone number is NOT available to me. Estate Atty told me he has no alternative number for Cuz.
My realtor has not had any success trying to find me a reasonably priced home nor has she found rooms for rent at a reasonable cost --- most landlords are also NOT accepting dogs anymore! I have a dog ---so as of right now, I have nowhere to live.
Estate Attorney never has clients. He has no admin working for him on a daily basis, nobody answers the phone so all you get is email. Since the start of the estate, he has been lax in returning phone calls but this takes the cake.
WHY will they not cooperate with me and my atty???
How can I get this issue resolved in a big hurry? I am fighting my ass off to buy this home and wow, they can't tell me NO? They simply refuse to cooperate with us and all my atty and I have gotten from Estate Atty is lip service and excuses.
I only started to initiate purchasing this home in May because my original plans for a home purchase fell through. Very long story.:(
Re: Attorney will not return my calls
Why this house was sold *first*:
My house was sold as part of a partition agreement; I am the plaintiff.
It's taken me nearly 2 years to get the partition agreement settled. There was no choice but to sell the house; a judge would have forced us to sell, anyway. A buy out of the other person was not possible - this house is too costly to repair and that is a whole other story in itself.
I am still reeling from getting this partition agreement settled and done and it's cost me in many ways, not just financially. I am having an oil tank removed tomorrow and the developer who bought the home won't do it himself --- that cost each of us owners 9 grand apiece.
I am interested in buying that house because it is cheaper than rent in this area.
There is something strange here about that atty: never in, never there, doesn't return calls or returns them weeks later, has no full time admin help --- and to contact the executor -- that guy "Returned to Sender'ed the certified mail letter I sent him. As I said, how did he know what was in it?
What a mess.
I am wondering if that house I am after was ever for sale officially --- it isn't far from me and when I'd pass by, no "for sale" sign was ever there. Who knows?
It needs modnerization, electricity up to code and "smart" and has 2 old fashioned bathrooms and a retro kitchen. You would think Executor would be keen to sell it, no?
Very strange. IF they said "no" I would be fine with that -- they aren't even saying no; they are not even choosing to reply. This is the whole thing that gets me.
And meanwhile we have seen next to nothing in the way of distributions --- this is taking way way too long, even for that.
.
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Is the house listed on the MLS for sale? Check some real estate boards, like realtor.com, if you are not sure. If its listed for sale, especially if its on the MLS, there should be a real estate agent you can contact. Whose client, I am guessing, would be the executor.
I don't know how spendy this would be, but maybe you could hire a private investigator to find this cousin. If for no other reason than to find out if they've even been notified of your offer. Maybe they don't care about the house and don't want to be bothered with it, which would be a shame for you and the other heirs. But I've seen that exact scenario happen twice, just in my own little two block neighborhood.
The house behind my house was derelict, neglected, and falling apart for YEARS. Because the person who owned it had died and (I'm assuming) his relatives didn't want to be bothered with it. He was living in it when he died, so I'm sure it was at least in okay condition at the time. I don't know what changed, but a developer finally bought it a few months ago and now it is being fixed up (thank goodness).
My previous tenants bought another house one block down from that one and ran into an unusual situation a couple weeks before closing. The person they were buying it from had bought the house in a property tax sale. The unpaid taxes happened because a previous owner had died and the heirs didn't want to pay the taxes for it. Problem was, the person who bought it on the tax lien had not owned it long enough to own it outright (homeowners have 3 years to pay back taxes plus interest before title can be claimed in my area). For my tenants to buy the house, the heirs had to sign off that the tax lien person could take ownership (or something to that effect). Much to my surprise, the heirs signed away their claim to the house and my tenants were able to close without any delays.
Neither one of those houses were worthless or in shambles when the owner died...though the one behind me turned into that.... yet, for whatever reasons, the houses were basically ignored.
Speaking of taxes, can you pull up property records for the house? Would that have the executor's information (not sure it would)? But the property tax bill needs to go somewhere and get paid by someone.
(I am a regular on these boards; this is a fake screen name)
This estate is now open for 4 years. 2 years it took for the state dept of taxation and inheritance to go through the file and since then --- April of 2013 -- my sibling and I have been having difficulty getting our distributions,. We've gotten little of what is in the distribution. (the executor cousin and his sibling are the other 2 beneficiaries)
My brother called up to see where his distribution was wandering and the cousin said "I can't give to you without giving to everybody else." What the heck?
I can't see how I cannot have Cuz' phone number for real. Suppose something "really" happened and he needed to be reached immediately and I or my brother had to speak to him directly?
I am not comfortable with the fact he has unsupervised access to that home --- anything of great value that needed to be accounted for and put into the estate's value could be gone; maybe he took it or who knows what???
Anyway, I can't get down to the bottom of this mess. My atty got the same song and dance that I got at the start of the month and then Estate Atty vanished.
I could file a grievance against Estate Atty. That won't get him moving; I don't know what will happen.
Have my atty send both these gents a letter? It may go unopened and returned to sender: so what good will it be for him to send them both some kind of a letter telling them to get steppin'?
Sue and say I want the bulk of my distribution? Could take months or even years.
That these 2 have been so lax -- for not a stronger way of putting it -- is what is very disturbing. Is there something funky going on here? or what? it's awfully odd that I didn't get just a "no,, we can't do this." I got no answer at all.
Anyway, I certainly understand your frustration but if I were in your shoes I would probably look at similar homes for sale and just give up on the family home. Estate issues make people go a little crazy, and sadly there is not much you can do if the Executor is dodging you.
If you really wanted to pursue it I'd look at getting a new attorney to represent you, but that will just eat into money that could be a DP on a different home. I agree with @hoffse to stop contacting the estate attorney directly.
I do not have a working phone number for him. I have A telephone number but as I said, it does not put me through to him. It sounds crazy but that is what I have and all I have.
I have his address. That letter came back marked "return to sender" and unopened.
How do I even get the bulk of my distribution? I can't reach him. What now?
Something is weird with that house, either way, and those distributions should have been given out already a long time ago.
I am wondering if Executor let that house go to rack and ruin and extreme neglect, or if there were repairs he never made -- or maybe even the house taxes were in arrears and the house went to tax sale a long time ago. Or is about to.
I am going to go to that tax collector's office on Monday and find out what the status of that house is.
And if one of these is the case, don't ask me how I feel about that.
I have not gotten a reply from either Cuz or the estate attorney.
I am going to file a complaint to get Cuz removed as executor -- doing it myself -- and I am going to file a grievance against that atty.
I am doing this on my own -- I just spent a shitload of money on my own attorney to get this house settled and done. I simply don't have the money anymore for this and I want this case to move.
I don't get the idea that any type of advance warning is going to work -- Oh hi, here's the complaint we are filing... -- and that won't get Cuz or that atty to come out of hiding to settle this thing with me, minus a court's involvement. Judging by the way things have gone so far, no chance of that.
So I have no choice but to take Cuz to court. If I choose to do nothing, everything will stay as it is right now.
This would be to file it, serve him by mail and then wait 35 days more to see if he signs and returns that summons. This is not appealing either and now I am sorry I didn't do something about this much earlier on.
I can't figure out what they are hiding about. Why can't I get Atty to willingly give me an accounting and why can't Cuz step forward and give me the rest of my distribution?
I looked at the microfilm that is over at the surrogate's office -- there is not much movement as far as the other distributions go -- and I don't think that the house I was interested in was ever for sale. When I came up with the idea of buying the place, the estate atty said to me, "Cuz will have to have the house appraised..." Huh? How is that? if it was for sale, it was priorly and recently appraised! Right? So what's going on here?
This entire thing is a mess. And now I am trying to get this whole mess cleaned up and unraveled. Sad.
They don't typically "appraise" the house until it is sold and the bank does an official appraisal to make sure that the house is worth what the mortgage amount is. A realtor will run "comps" or "comparables" for homes in the area with a similar square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, lot size, etc. so that the list price is appropriate for the home.
Maybe in your state but not here in NJ -- I had to have the house appraised before it went on the market. Comps went into deciding that.
The only thing I can do is go after the executor. Not something I want to do but he and his atty have been off the radar for the last 2 weeks, after the last request from my atty.
It is awfully strange. Why would these 2 be so sequestered away?
Although, assuming there aren't any other factors we're not being told, I'm wondering if cuz is planning to make off with the inheritance.