Hi everyone my name is josh. I’m trying to look for some advice on a situation me and my wife are in. Long story short my wife’s grandmother passed away 2 years ago and left her home to my wife’s older sibling and aunt. The older sibling ended up getting life in prison and the aunt moved out of town. The house has been vacant for a while and I looked up the taxes on the appraisal district and saw they were delinquent and the property hasn’t been kept up with. So we want take over the property. The sibling in prison signed the power of attorney papers for the property over to my wife so there’s no problem there. When she reached out to the aunt, the case was very different. We told the aunt we would pay the delinquent taxes and all the attorneys fees and the deed title transfer fees. We would even mail all the paperwork to her ready to sign and be notarized. Well she immediately said no and made it clear that she didn’t want the property at all and had no intentions of paying the taxes or keeping up with the property but she didn’t want to sign it over. Any advice?

Offer to pay her directly for the property. See if a few thousand dollars in the mail would change her mind. Cash for keys.

Best of luck!

@Joshua Villafranco

Cash for keys is a good strategy, as mentioned previously, but there are other things you could do. You could pursue a quiet title action or attempt to buy the taxes for the property at auction whenever that day comes. I would tell the aunt that you want her blessing and you’d like things to be easy, but that you don’t need it.

Good luck on this property, sounds like a great investment.

Cash for keys is your best bet. Find out why she doesn't want to sign. It could be something very small with an easy fix. If you know her motivation, you can come up with a win-win situation.

The other, less popular/more expensive/more time-consuming option could be to involve an attorney. 

@Michael Albaum thank you for the advice!

Thanks for the advice! I’ve tried the cash for keys route and she just fails to respond. I think I’m just going to have to wait till the day it goes to auctions for the taxes.

The advice above is completely solid and trying to find out her motivation for wanting to have nothing to do with it to begin with might be a touchy subject so you might need to ease into it a few times. One thing I would say is don't wait until it is up for auction, if you need to look into paying the taxes that are longest outstanding so that the county can't put it into foreclosure before you have a chance to work something out with the aunt. You are closer to the drivers seat on this than any other potential buyer, take advantage of that. 

@Joshua Villafranco Your best course of action is to be persistent (but not annoying) and, hopefully, the aunt will come around. Figure out the best way to approach the subject and try to find the point point and the best way to relief it for her. Waiting for it to go to tax sale should be the last resort.

If she doesn't want anything to do with the property you can always try the following two options:

1. Quiet title action - You may win be default judgment if she fails to respond. This will remove an interest she has in the property.

2. Forced sale occurs through a partition lawsuit. A partition lawsuit (also called a partition action), is a court process to divide up a property between co-owners.(copied from google search).

Either way its better to pay her directly than to sue her. Good luck.