property taxes
Billy Binion | 8.27.2024 4:54 PM
For years, Kevin Fair has been staring down a coarse reality: poised to have his home seized, along with all of its equity, because he accrued a modest debt on his property taxes. The Nebraska Supreme Court last week said that was unconstitutional.
That such a decision needed to be spelled out in the first place may sound dire. The absurdity of that is dwarfed by the fact that he nearly lost.
Fair is familiar with loss. In 2013, he quit his job to care for his wife, Terry, who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Living on his Social Security, the Fairs were unable to pay their 2014 property tax bill. That $588 debt would set in motion a chain of events that ultimately ended in the Scotts Bluff County government giving a private investor the deed to their home.
In 2015, that investor, Continental Resources, quietly purchased the Fairs' tax debt and continued satisfying the bill with the government. In 2018, the company then sent the couple the charges: $5,268 for the overdue taxes, along with penalties,........