My dad owns half the house and my mom owns the other half. My dad is incompetent and cannot live in the house. Neither one wants to give up their half of the house but they have to settle the house in order to get a divorce.
My mom resigned as my dads power of attorney for finances and property and my uncle took over doing it in 2012. In September of 2015 my uncle died and by next year his POA duties had transferred to someone else.
Now jumping ahead to 2017 we recently had the house appraised in order to settle it and on the Mpac report the real estate provided it shows something called sales history, and in the sales history it shows before my uncle died in september of 2015? my dad's half of the house was transfer to my mom for 1$?? and that it was approved in December of 2015, 3 months after my uncle had died. My uncle never told my mom or my dad that he transfered my dads half of the house to my mom before he died. MY dad has been paying half the property taxes still even...
Can anyone make any sense of this I am going crazy... (POA transfered dad's half of the house to my mom for $1 and never told anyone before he himself died. At least according to the mpac statement provided by the real estate agent and for 2 years nobody knew the house was no longer in my dad's name. Could it be an error on the mpac report? The only thing I can think of is he did it in September before he died and then nobody challenged it so it got approved in December 2015.
-The POA generally has the power to make such decisions. You would need to read the uncles POA given to him by your dad to see if he had the right to sell the property.
-Usually the $1 is a figure used to keep the actual selling price private as the deed has to be recorded.
-Dads current POA could look back at dads bank statement to see if a deposit was made about the time of the transfer.
-Usually taxing entities receive updates from the county offices when property changes hands. You might want to check with the property tax office as well as the insurance agent on how payments have been received and what knowledge they have about the transfer.
If you go to your county office with your paperwork you should be able to find the document where the POA signed to transfer the property.
-But the big question is what do you want to do? A qualified elder attorney might be able to guide you through.
-The uncle may have been trying to prepare for your fathers future by eliminating assets that might in the future prevent him from receiving Medicaid assistance. Depending on the timing it might have been a wise move or it might have been a bad one. He wasn't around to prevent the tax payments from going out of dads account.
-You need ALL the facts. You might look for your uncles attorney and see if you can better understand uncles motives.
This could be a larger problem than taxes.
If you knew your uncle to be a fair and competent person you might find things are as they should be.
Come back and give more information as you unravel what happened and others will be better able to assist you. All of the details and balances can be adjusted at closing when the property is sold if your mom and your dads POA are in agreement.