Former Olympic champion and pro boxing legend Pernell Whitaker just had his mother evicted from the home he bought for her when he was making millions because it’s his last asset and he is flat broke.
Is this something that YOU think that you could ever do?
http://www.wvec.com/my-city/norfolk/Whitaker-Versus-Whitaker-247259271.html
I don’t know what kind of relationship they have but if he said "Ok mom, I’ll buy you this house as long as you pay the property tax (which was probably, lets say, $600 a month on the high side) and then she decided to stop paying it…what’s he supposed to do. If he doesn’t have the money to cover a few years of back taxes ISTM that’s his only option.
I suppose if the wanted to be ‘nice’ he could sell the house, pay the back taxes and give her enough money to buy a new house but make sure the new house is totally in her name so when she stops paying the taxes on that house it’s her problem and not his. That was his mistake. When he bought her the house he had a career and an income and life was good.
I wonder who was paying the property tax at the beginning, him or her.
I wonder, and this I think is the important thing, if he ever said “Mom, I can’t afford this, you’re going to have to find a smaller place/move in to sister’s house/get your own apartment/get a job etc” and what she said. Basically, at some point, regardless of who was initially responsible for making the tax payments, the city came to him for the back taxes. He told mom he couldn’t afford them. What did she do? Did she work with him to figure something out or did she sit tight and tell him to deal with it because she wasn’t going to move out of her house.
ETA, hopefully that all made sense, I was thinking about it as I was typing it. The more I typed the more questions came to mind.
I’d say the crux of the matter is that the house is still in his name. If he’d signed it over to her in the beginning, I suspect covering the expenses all this time wouldn’t have been a big deal for her. Paying taxes on a house she doesn’t own seems a likely sticking point - even if she’d kept current, he could still boot her out and sell it.
If the issue was just the taxes, why not sign her house over to her now? She sells it, pays the back taxes, the costs associated with the transfer of ownership,and moves into something more modest with the remainder. He’s clear of the tax problem, mom’s still got a free house.
The property taxes have not been paid and neither one of them has the money to pay them, never mind the part about who was supposed to pay them. That means the house is going to be taken and sold to satisfy the taxes, and neither one of them will end up with a red cent.
His mother is going to be put our either way; by the tax sale or when her son evicts her so he can sell the house, pay off the taxes and net some cash.
It would be idiotic for them to not choose the option that nets them the cash. So hell yeah, I could do that in a heartbeat. It’s a pretty clear cut financial decision.
It’s easy for him to look like the bad guy (and maybe he is), but we don’t know all the circumstances. After 25 to 30 years of living in a free house, she doesn’t have enough money saved to pay her property taxes? She isn’t collecting social security? His financial problems are brand new news to her? Thios wan’t a long time coming and she didn’t have years to prepare for this eventuality?
Uh, yeah.
I am very close to my mother. If I didn’t have two pennies to rub together, but a house worth $200,000, I’d be like “Mom, I’ve got no money except this house. I have to sell it so I can go on living.”
A nice, normal mom would say “Oh ok, we’ll work together to find something else.”
A crazy-ass mom would fight you in court.
Painting Whitaker as an awful son because he has to evict his mother in this situation is like painting a woman as an awful mom because leaves her children in the hands of strangers [at the daycare] 8 hours a day.
Seems like everything was normal until someone went cuckoo.
I could do it, and I hope my kids could do it too.
Too bad mom didn’t move before attorney fees ate up more of what little money will be left.
Can we blame the lawyers? Why advise her to fight this?
I have to imagine there is a lot more to this, especially given the fact that Sweet Pea apparently had a pretty bad drug problem.
Of course I could, and I’d be a little pissed that my mother wasn’t more cooperative so that I had to actually do an eviction.
On the other hand, I also like to think I’d plan a little better in the first place. It amazes me how many athletes or performers spend money like they’ll have million dollar incomes their whole lives. I’d also have considered some different ownership options - maybe even putting the property in a trust. That kind of protects everyone from a number of potential bad things.
I’m a momma’s boy. No way could I evict my momma, regardless.
Of course, if I were hurting, momma would offer the house up.
Having your 73 year old mother evicted so you can sell her house is a shitty thing. Having the government evict your mother and take the house, leaving both of you with nothing, is an even shittier thing. So yeah, in that situation I’d do the exact same thing. Of course, my mom would have insisted on selling the house the second I started having to sell off other assets and threatened to turn me over her knee if I tried to argue about it.
Then again, the rest of my family would have long since offered to help. And if they couldn’t help enough to keep the house, they’d bloody well not talk shit about me on the news for going with my least shitty option.
He’s painted as the bad guy because he lost the money to addictions. If he lost millions to this then we’ll be reading another story about him after he burns through a couple hundred thousand dollars.
She’s going to be evicted because she can’t pay the taxes. He could have sold the house and bought her a used mobile home in a location she could afford to live in on her own SS income. At this point that’s the best he could do.