Discussion Board Forum 3
Property
Shawnté L. Reed
23 September 2012
My client Barney has many legal challenges to face. Both his mountain property and his beach house are in jeopardy of being taken from him. He also faces a foreclosure on the mountain property. Last but not lease his vehicle was stolen and later found, but the person who has the vehicle refuses to return it without a payment of some sort. We will analyze legal actions Barney must take to navigate through this dilemma.
First, in the case of the mountain property, Barney bought this property with three friends who are all now deceased. At the time of purchase they each co-owned the property through joint tenancy with a right of survivorship. This means all co-owners own equal shares; the right of survivorship means if a co-owner dies then their share is transferred to the surviving co-owners (Kubasek, Brennan, & Browne, Corporate Codes of Ethics, 2012). Under joint tenancy with survivorship property cannot be willed to a relative. In this situation Barney is the sole owner of the property, but has not visited the property in over 20 years. The law prohibits Andy from willing his share to his son Opie.
Now that we have proved Opie did not have legal right to the residence or to use the property as collateral for a personal loan we can dispute the foreclosure action. Opie has committed fraud, falsely using collateral that did not belong to him and the bank is guilty of not providing proper due diligence; ensuring they were doing business with the right person and that the collateral is represented correctly. The bank has a responsibility, prior to foreclosure proceedings, to know who holds the title to the property (Unknown, Banks Fail At Due Diligence in Foreclosures, 2012).
We must now turn our attention to the issue with Ernest. Ernest has been living on the property for over 20 years and has built a cabin home during that time. You would...