This week I finally closed on a house that took 60 days to close – and it was a cash sale. It should have been a two or three-week process. But we encountered a problem that I have not encountered before.
My client, who is a close friend of mine, had a Lady Bird deed on her parents’ home. A Lady Bird deed is a special form of life estate deed that gives the owner continued control over the property until his or her death. Once the owner dies, the property is automatically transferred to the new owner without the need for probate.
The Lady Bird deed was prepared by a local attorney and filed with the county clerk while my friend's parents were still living. Simple enough.
But, the attorney got the legal address of the property wrong on the deed. The mistake was not noticed until after my friend’s mother passed away. My friend went to the county clerk’s office to try to fix the problem, and the person working in the county clerk’s office told her she could amend the legal address using a power of attorney, which she did – one POA for her mom and one POA for her dad. She thought the mistake was corrected, and that she had a Lady Bird deed which would transfer the property to her upon the death of her father. She did not know that the power of attorney given to her by her mother was not valid once her mother had passed. The person working at the county clerk’s office must not have known that either.
After her father passed away, my friend asked me to help her sell her parents’ home. I knew she had a Lady Bird deed, which I verified with the county clerk. We had a cash offer after just a few days on the market, and we thought we would be closing in just a couple of weeks.
The title company brought the problem of the invalid power of attorney to light, and my friend ended up having to probate her mother’s will before we could close on the house. She was able to use an affidavit of heirship for her father, so she did not have to probate his will. Still, this set us back almost two months.
The delay and the ensuing frustrations could have been avoided if someone in the attorney’s office had proof-read the original Lady Bird deed to make sure the legal description of the property was correct.
Legal descriptions of properties can be long with many numbers and letters that might not make a lot of sense. Just one number or letter typed incorrectly can cause a big problem!
This closing finally happened because the buyer was very understanding of the issue and was willing to wait for the problem to be solved. We were lucky!
Estate sales can be tricky. I have done many of them, but I still learn something new almost every time. It pays to use a Realtor with experience in estate sales, and it certainly pays to use an attorney who proofreads the deed!
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