Family Home Sold At Auction Over $1.63 Overdue Tax Bill

[matcom]

<snip>

In1996, the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office mailed a paltry $1.63 property tax bill for the Slidell-area home of Kermit and Dolores Atwood that never reached its destination.

The seemingly innocuous, misaddressed bill was the start of a bizarre legal ordeal that threatens to leave the couple homeless and now stands at the door of the state Supreme Court.

The chain of events that followed the wayward property tax bill, including the eventual sale of the home at a sheriff's tax sale, is described by Dolores Atwood as "seven years of emotional hell."

"I don't know how much more I can endure," said Atwood, 69, while sitting in a FEMA trailer in front of her Katrina-ravaged brick home on Dauphine Street, just north of Slidell.

"I wake up in the middle of the night, and it's on my mind," she said. "All this should have never happened."

But it did, all because of the $1.63 tax bill that Atwood and her husband, Kermit, never received. And they still face the threat of losing their property because of the bill, which was mailed to a defunct address and returned undelivered to the Sheriff's Office.

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1184482256189990.xml&coll=1

[jus_the_facts]

1. That's fucked up....my jury duty notification got sent to my old address...and I haven't lived there

....for almost 3 YEARS!! :(

[underpants]

2. END THE ESTATE TAX NOW!!!!

:shrug: Hell that is as good as any of their arguments on the estate tax anyway