Condo Proof
By Rick Boettger
An ongoing dispute with my condominium association got me researching what legal charges and defenses I have against them. What I found was shocking: wacky laws protecting debtors give me and a lot of retirees like me remarkable immunity from paying people we legally owe money to.
The laws seem sensible on their face. They were designed to protect retirees and really poor people. But they end up tempting clever weasels like me to legally game the system at the expense of others.
The laws define what someone winning a “creditor judgment” can squeeze out of his debtor. In my case, if I stop paying my $10,000/year condo fee, the association would win a court judgment that I owe them the money. But, amazingly, they wouldn’t be able to collect a cent until my wife and I both die. All of our considerable assets are exempt from seizure, and our substantial income exempt from garnishment.
Federal law exempts Social Security and Veterans benefits. Florida law exempts pensions and annuities. Federal law also exempts all of my wages in my part-time retirement job. What about my Vanguard account and rental income? The rental income would be very hard to seize, but I am unwinding my ownership there anyway.
The Vanguard money I would exempt by spending it all to pay off our mortgage, and putting any remainder in an annuity. In Florida, your residence is exempt from judgment, no matter how valuable it is. This would be a great investment. It would save almost $20,000/year in interest and windstorm insurance, twice the return that we’re getting now on the same amount of money. Plus, the large position I took in junk bonds in 2006 has been very good to us, but I’d like to quit winners on them, as they could lose a lot of value if the Fed raises interest rates.
On the face of it, these are ridiculous laws. They allow us to live with a high five-figure income (actually a higher non-housing income than our previous low six-figures) in a million-dollar home. We’ll have to lease a car, because only up to $1,000 of the value of an owned car is exempt, and I don’t want Cynthia driving that bad a clunker. Our nice furnishings are exempt, as we’d get nowhere near the allowed $8,000 for personal possessions at a yard sale, and we don’t own art or jewelry.
Based on what I’ve read, I would hesitate to extend credit to us seniors. We vote, so we’ve made rules that protect us. A new one specifically lets us keep two months’ worth of Social Security checks in our bank as long as they are direct deposited. That means I don’t have to cash all of our checks, but can continue to direct deposit income and directly debit our credit cards and other services.
So while a young non-voter earning the minimum wage and sharing a room can have his meager income garnished, we seniors have given ourselves the right to live like kings, free from creditors until we die. Really, the single change in our lives would be leasing instead of owning a car.
Yes, in 15 or 25 years from now when the last of us dies (that would be Cynthia), our Association will collect from the sale of our beloved home the two to four hundred thousand bucks they are owed. Maybe they could take out a yearly loan secured by their lien, but if not, they’re screwed for years. Our Community Foundation will still be happy with what should be by then the remaining million+ (we are Legacy Donors).
Kind of like taking out a reverse mortgage without all of the paperwork and exorbitant fees and windstorm insurances. To tell the truth, I expect the condo association to stop acting badly towards me, so I won’t have to do this. But the fact is I could, and they couldn’t, as they all have garnishable income. I sleep better.
And remember, while I am allowed to do legal work pro se for myself, I am NOT a lawyer, and you are a fool to rely on anyone but a member of the Florida bar for any decisions along these lines. Please, any such attorney, contact me with any corrections or additions. First one with a correction is the one I hire and pay well if I actually bend to temptation! (Hint: the annuity dodge has to have a catch, but I couldn’t find it . . .)
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How can you allow such drivel in your publication? First, boettger uses his column to try to sell his condo and now he’s publically threatening the other condo owners with not paying his obligated condo fees and then advertising for free legal advice. What a loser. Again…. DROP the DRIVELING DODO.
Joan,
I applaud your epic take down of Shaquille (a sobriquet I gave him). Yes, this inconsequential little man, a wanna be Donald Trump, cannot help but bore us with his wealth and financial acumen. I routinely embarrass him for the nonsense he spouts at The Blue Paper, but I do appreciate your literary adroitness and the eloquence with which you use your sardonic and rapier wit. Well done.
Joan, do you have a last name, or do you do your humorless name-calling only anonymously?
My humor is widely appreciated, though not picked up on by you. “Anybody wanna buy a house?” is NOT a serious solicitation, but the tongue-in-cheek conclusion of ruminations that have widely provoked serious discussions.
Here, you are assuming the condo levees are legitimate. The clear and repeated point of the column is to address absurd disparities in the creditor protection laws. Anyway, the condo is protected by the lien, in that they will get every cent with interest and fees in the long run (which may not be so long–Cynthia and I are getting long in the tooth).
I doubt your condo mates can appreciate the humor of a self-confessed weasel.
“A man may say full sooth in game and play.”
Shaquille!!!
so this is where you’ve been hiding!
I see you garner the same kind of response here as there; color me shocked!
hey why don’t you write something for the Blue Paper? I miss the yellow journalism and the infantile cognitive prose you’re so famous for. don’t you miss your “internet troll?”
“I hestitate not to pronounce, that every man who is his own lawyer, has a fool for a client.