A Pennsylvania woman has lost her home for little more than the cost of a Starbucks Frappuccino.
The woman, Eileen Battisti, and her husband, Anthony, bought a home in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, just outside of Pittsburgh, in 1999. The single-family home stands on just a little over a third of an acre.
According to court documents (opinion downloads as a pdf), five years later, Battisti’s husband died, leaving her with three children, the home, and the mortgage. She used the proceeds from her husband’s life insurance to pay off the mortgage but was unable to timely keep up with the other bills, including the taxes due on the property.
The bills kept coming in and Battisti claims that “physical and emotional challenges” made it difficult to make ends meet. Among those challenges was a serious injury that she says left her unable to work for some time. So, she admits, she was occasionally late paying the bills.
In 2008, Battisti missed the deadline for paying her property taxes. Battisti eventually paid the original tax bill ($833.88) plus penalty and late fees. She did not, however, tack on the additional interest which had accrued but was not yet included on the tax bill for the late payment. How late was she? Six days. The interest on the late payment? $6.30.
In 2010, Battisti was late again with her county tax payments. She again settled up, paying interest and penalty in full, but only for 2010. She still had an outstanding account balance on her account totaling $234.72: that was the $6.30 due from 2008 plus additional interest and costs. That amount remained unpaid.
By 2011, the amount due from the 2008 tax bill had ballooned to $255.84. Enough was enough, according to county officials, who began the process of putting Battisti’s house up for sale.
Battisti’s house was eventually sold at sheriff’s sale for nearly $120,000 in order to satisfy the unpaid balance from 2008. After taxes and costs deducted from the sale, Battisti is entitled to the $108,039 of the proceeds. That isn’t what Battisti wants. She doesn’t want the money, she says: she merely wants to keep the house where she has lived for the past 15 years, now worth about $280,000. Apparently, she has the option to do that if she can scramble together nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Battisti claims that the man who bought her house, S.P. Lewis, has offered to sell the house back to her for $260,000.
Battisti sued the county and Lewis after the sale, alleging, among other things that she had no notice of the debt or the sale. Battisti claims that she was never aware that she had an outstanding tax bill from 2008. The county claims, however, that Battisti was notified of the delinquency beginning in 2009. However, a June 3, 2009, “notice of return and claim” was returned to the county as undelivered and the county can’t prove that they provided subsequent notice in 2009.
The county next argued that even if Battisti didn’t know about the balance due in 2009 or in 2010, she certainly knew about it in 2011 when she accepted notice by certified mail and later, was personally served by a sheriff’s deputy. The case, which has winded its way through the Pennsylvania court system, eventually landed in front of Beaver County Common Pleas Judge Gus Kwidis who sided with the county this week.
Joe Askar, Beaver County’s chief solicitor, agrees with the ruling, saying:
The county never wants to see anybody lose their home, but at the same time the tax sale law, the tax real estate law, doesn’t give a whole lot of room for error, either.
Askar estimates that the county takes 600 to 1,000 properties a year to sheriff sale over unpaid taxes. Sheriff’s sales in the county are conducted on a monthly basis. Sale dates and properties are advertised in the Beaver County Times and the Beaver County Legal Journal prior to sale.
Those advertising requirements didn’t help Battisti who claims she was blindsided. She continues to maintain that she was wronged and cannot believe that she could lose her house over a $6.30 tax bill. Through her lawyer, she has indicated that she plans an appeal. For now, Battisti remains in her home.
