{"id":853843,"date":"2025-06-06T22:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-06-07T03:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/deadline-looms-in-minnesota-property-tax-forfeiture-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T22:12:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-07T03:12:11","slug":"deadline-looms-in-minnesota-property-tax-forfeiture-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/deadline-looms-in-minnesota-property-tax-forfeiture-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadline looms in Minnesota property tax forfeiture lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thousands of Minnesota<\/a> residents who lost homes over property taxes<\/a> may now be eligible for compensation, following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court<\/a><\/strong> ruling and a resulting $109 million class-action settlement fund.<\/p>\n

The case began with Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old Minneapolis<\/a> woman who owed $15,000 in property taxes on her condominium.<\/p>\n

In response, Hennepin County, Minnesota, seized the property, sold it for $40,000 and kept the full amount \u2014 leaving Tyler with nothing.<\/p>\n

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While she accepted that the government was entitled to the back taxes, Tyler argued that the excess $25,000 from the sale belonged to her.<\/p>\n

The nation\u2019s highest court unanimously agreed<\/a> \u2014 declaring that the government violated the U.S. Constitution by keeping more than it was owed.<\/p>\n

Attorneys raise awareness<\/h2>\n

With a June 6 deadline to file class-action claims approaching, case attorneys Vildan Teske and Garrett Blanchfield spoke with HousingWire<\/strong> about efforts to make those affected aware of the payout.<\/p>\n

As many as 15,000 people across Minnesota may qualify for restitution if they lost a home, business or other property due to tax forfeitures between 2012 and 2023.<\/p>\n

More than 6,000 properties statewide have already been identified as potentially eligible.<\/p>\n

\u201cKroll<\/strong>, which is the claims administrator, mailed out and emailed notice to the potential class members starting in September of 2024 and has done several mailings since then,\u201d Teske said. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut we also know that this is a difficult population to find, because they\u2019ve moved several times and, by definition, they are no longer at the address that was given to us by the counties, which is their property address that was forfeited.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we are doing everything that we can to get the word out so that, in case the mailed notice didn\u2019t get to them, that they would hear about the settlement and put in their claim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Teske and Blanchfield urged claimants to file online for the sake of processing speed.<\/p>\n

The $109 million fund will provide payouts to affected property owners or their heirs, in cases involving deceased individuals.<\/p>\n

Class-action claims can be submitted here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Disproportionate impact<\/h2>\n

Many of those impacted are elderly<\/a> or on fixed incomes, and advocates say this settlement may offer long-overdue justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people who lost their houses often can\u2019t really afford to lose their houses,\u201d Blanchfield said. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a lot of money, and the house \u2014 the money, the equity that they have in the house \u2014 is likely their biggest asset. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis really has a disproportionate effect upon the people that it happens to, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re so eager to try and get the money back to these folks. For a lot of them, they lost their greatest financial asset. For some of these people, the recovery will be in the six figures. That\u2019s not the average, but it\u2019s what\u2019s there for some.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since the Supreme Court decision, other states have begun revisiting their tax forfeiture laws to prevent similar constitutional violations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s over a dozen other states that have had similar statutes to the Minnesota statute, so it\u2019s the minority of states, but still a substantial number of people that are impacted,\u201d Teske said. \u201cThe rest of the states had statutes that allowed the homeowner to get the surplus value back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claimants deemed eligible for a payout will be able to receive up to 90% of the surplus value from their home sale \u2014 plus interest \u2014 going back to the forfeiture date, the attorneys said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe started mailing out notices more than six months ago, but now we\u2019re in the last month of this of this class period, so this is kind of the home stretch,\u201d Blanchfield said. \u201cWhen they look at the claim form, if they don\u2019t think they have documentation that they might need, they should still submit a claim, because the important thing is to get a claim submitted before the deadline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere will be opportunities after that to submit supplementary documents if the settlement administrator thinks that\u2019s necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thousands of Minnesota residents who lost homes over property taxes may now be eligible for compensation, following a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling and a resulting $109 million class-action settlement fund. The case began with Geraldine Tyler, a 94-year-old Minneapolis woman who owed $15,000 in property taxes on her condominium. In response, Hennepin County, Minnesota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":853844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4085,30428],"tags":[10903,9967],"class_list":{"0":"post-853843","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-deadline","8":"category-looms","9":"tag-deadline","10":"tag-looms"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}