Ex-husband trying to sell valuable real estate and has large child support debt.

[yourartsdesire]

What is the name of your state?California & Virginia.
The ex owes $47,000+ in child support arrearages. He owns valuable real estate in SoCal along with his siblings. They are in contact with a realtor and asking price is $3-4 million. Prior to his parent's death the siblings formed a corporation
and it is this corporation that owns the property.

How can I find out the name of the family corporation that is listed on the title of the property? I currently reside in VA and don't know how to access title records in CA. I imagine any footwork I can do prior to seeing my attorney would help her out. I would like to have a lien put on this property so I can recover the child support arrearages when it is sold (and someone can't take the money and run with it).

Thank you to anyone who can offer assistance in this matter.

 

[Florid-aise]

What is the name of your state?California & Virginia.
The ex owes $47,000+ in child support arrearages. He owns valuable real estate in SoCal along with his siblings. They are in contact with a realtor and asking price is $3-4 million. Prior to his parent's death the siblings formed a corporation
and it is this corporation that owns the property.

How can I find out the name of the family corporation that is listed on the title of the property? I currently reside in VA and don't know how to access title records in CA. I imagine any footwork I can do prior to seeing my attorney would help her out. I would like to have a lien put on this property so I can recover the child support arrearages when it is sold (and someone can't take the money and run with it).

Thank you to anyone who can offer assistance in this matter.

If you know the location of the property, the property tax assessor's office in the county where this property is located will be able to tell you who holds title to it and the address the property tax notices are sent to.

Once you uncover the name of the corporation. It may be possible to determine if it is a CA corporation by going online of the CA corporations website.

If it is a foreign corporation, (meaning a corp. formed in another state), it very well may be filed also in CA doing business in CA. Either way, once you have the corporation's name, your attorney can tell you where the corp. is originally from, and who the officers of the corp. are, in less than 3 minutes.

 

[yourartsdesire]

Thank you for your reply.

Thanks for your reply. This gives me a place to start.

 

[Florid-aise]

Thanks for your reply. This gives me a place to start.

The tax office info should also cross reference either the book and page number of the courthouse records, or at a minimum, a cross reference to an "instrument number".

Either one of these will take you directly to the deed itself. If the corp. holds title to the land, the deed will confess where the corp. headquarters are and who in particular to send notices to.

Right there, in plain sight, on the face of the deed itself.

 

[I AM ALWAYS LIABLE]

My response:

You can't place a lien or a lis pendens on the property. The property doesn't belong to your ex. It belongs to a corporation, and the corporation doesn't owe you any money. That's the whole reason behind corporate structure!

Unless you can prove that the corporation is the "alter ego" of your ex, you're not going to be able to "pierce the corporate veil".

Your best bet is to hire a California attorney who can file an Order to Show Cause against him and, perhaps, get him some jail time along with a personal judgment against him.

Why would you sit on your hands for so long, allowing the arrearages to get to $48,000?

IAAL

 

[Florid-aise]

First things first IAAL. That is what OP is trying to establish. Just the beginings of what will certainly turn out to be a difficult legal contest.

That issue is as certain as the sun having set last night.

 

[yourartsdesire]

Have not been sitting on my hands.

Thanks for the further information. I have not been sitting on my hands for so long.
I tried taking him to court a year after he stopped paying child support. That accomplished nothing except getting the amount of child support he was supposed to pay, increased. He has been "self-employed", did not get any tax refunds, had no bank accounts they could locate to garnish. Only in the last few years has the state of Virginia been able to get money out of him, when he got a job with sufficient hours requiring the state of California to be notified.

Trying to get things done across state lines is difficult. So, for the past two years checks have been coming sporadically and that is better than nothing.

The lawyer I retained several years ago told me that she could not get a lien put on the property because the arrearages at that time were less than $10,000, if my memory serves me correctly. So I paid out a couple of thousand dollars to be told there was nothing further I could do at that point.
Now that I have been alerted that the family property (which I was told would never be sold) is possibly up for sale I AM trying again to do something about it. I did without child support for several years because I was told that
there was no way to collect from him while he was self-employed. And, believe me, there are all too many employers who are willing to pay someone and not have child support withheld because the paperwork is a hassle.

I try and retain a positive attitude about all of this-I had the children and that was what mattered most but doing without support for those years wasn't always easy, so, if there is any way to recover some of this money
I would like to do so.

 

[nextwife]

Before spending any real money on an attempt to get money out of this particular sale, FIRST research the title to determine what sort of actual EQUITY exists in this property. Just because it is valuble land does NOT necessarilly mean there is much equity there. For all you know, they took the equity out by loan years ago. I've seen many RE closings of multi-million dollar properties in which the proceeds check was minimal because another project had been done using equity from the property being closed. Also, there may be unpaid taxes, mortgages, and other liens, judgements already against the property. PLUS, closing fees and commissions. And then whatever his portion may be.

AS IAAL pointed out, a lien filed against ex is NOT a lien on real estate owned by Y Corp.

Many counties even have their RE records available online now. Do a Google search for that county. YOu may actually be able to pull up a copy of any deeds,., mortgages, etc right from your desktop.

 

[yourartsdesire]

The Internet is a wonderful thing.

Thanks for the advice from everyone. I did a web search and discovered that the property is listed in all the names of the siblings, NOT a corporation as I had been previously told. The property research also showed the spouses of three of the siblings having signed a "quit-claim" deed on the property. My name is not recorded as having signed a quit-claim nor do I recall signing such a paper.
He inheirited the property in 1980; we divorced in 1988.

Anyway, thank you to everyone who responded; at least I can send the information I have to an attorney in California and hope for the best.