Venice
woman allowed to keep home
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Courtesy
of the Herald Tribune
Posted
August 6, 2005
By
PAUL QUINLAN
SOUTH
VENICE -- A last-minute legal maneuver and a check from a Shriners
clown saved a single mother from losing her home Friday.
Karin Healy, the Venice
woman whose homeowners association auctioned off her house
after she failed to pay her dues, will keep her home, a
judge ruled Friday.
"I'm going to sleep wonderfully tonight," the
47-year-old woman said after embracing her daughters as she
emerged from the courtroom Friday morning. "I couldn't
be happier."
The Fairway Village of Sarasota Homeowners Association sold
Healy's home at auction on July 20 for $11,000 in an effort
to collect on her $6,165 debt, which included about two
years of unpaid dues, interest, penalties and attorney's
fees. The buyer also
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Karin
Healy, left, hugs her attorney, Nancy Cason, outside the
courtroom Friday in Venice. Healy's house had been
auctioned by her homeowners association. |
would
have assumed Healy's $137,000 mortgage debt.
The
case demonstrated the power that homeowners associations hold over their
members and raised questions about whether they should be allowed to sell
off a resident's home to settle relatively minor debts.
In a 15-minute hearing, Healy's attorney, Nancy Cason, argued that the
wording of the court's foreclosure judgment, which came June 2, afforded
Healy a 10-day window after the sale to file an objection and essentially
stop the title from changing hands.
At the advice of a previous attorney, Healy had filed her objection five
days after the auction in a two-page, handwritten letter.
"If she had not written that letter, I think we would not have had
the legal argument we had today," Cason said. "The law favors
you in keeping your property."
Before Friday's hearing, Healy posted the $6,165 with the court, prompting
Circuit Court Judge Nancy K. Donnellan to dismiss the sale without
objection from either the association's attorney, Sharon Vander Wulp, or
the buyer of the home.
"We want to give the homeowner the most chance to retain possession
of the house," Vander Wulp told the judge.
Healy said after the hearing that a Shriners clown had stepped forward and
helped her with the debt after hearing of her plight. She would not
identify the benefactor.
Since her story first appeared in the Herald-Tribune on Wednesday, Healy
said she had been deluged with supportive phone calls. One Englewood
family, she said, sent her a check for $30, which she plans to return.
"It has restored my faith in human nature," Healy said. "My
phone has been ringing nonstop with so much support and good wishes."
Vander Wulp declined to comment after the hearing. In telephone interviews
Friday afternoon, both she and Bob Moore, a partner at her firm, Kanetsky,
Moore & DeBoer, said they structure their final foreclosure judgments
to provide homeowners with a last-minute chance to pay association debts.
"Our aim is to have people pay the assessment, not to take their
house away from them," Vander Wulp said.
Healy, whose financial problems culminated in her filing for bankruptcy
last fall, said she struggled to find an attorney who would represent her
at Friday's hearing.
The attorney who recommended that she write her objection letter after the
house auction declined to represent her further, she said, because he had
planned to go on vacation. She said she called at least 30 others who
refused to take her case before meeting with Cason on Thursday, the day
before the hearing. The 28-year-old real estate attorney with Syprett,
Meshad, Resnick & Lieb in Sarasota agreed to take the case free of
charge.
"They were all negative. They said: 'You probably don't have a leg to
stand on; I'm busy; I'm in court; I'm going on vacation; I am on
vacation,' " Healy said. "(Cason) called, said, 'Meet me
tomorrow.' She was excellent."
In her objection letter, Healy argued that she never received advance
notice of the foreclosure or sale, which divested her of what she
estimated to be more than $200,000 in home equity.
One nearly identical home in the neighborhood sold in April for $320,000.
During the hearing, Cason reiterated Healy's claim that she never was
properly notified of the foreclosure or sale. Vander Wulp had objected to
the claim in a brief filed in the days before the hearing. The judge
declared the point moot.
"I do not need to find whether notice was made," the judge said,
granting the motion to redeem the house.
Healy said she plans to stay at her home in Fairway Village, the small,
two-street, 124-home neighborhood adjacent but not related to the
Plantation Golf and Country Club.
"I harbor no ill will," Healy said.
Herald-Tribune
reporter Will Rothschild contributed to this story.
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