Questions people ask us

Because your name came up in the public record, tied to a property that's stuck.

We spend our days inside those records — deed histories, courthouse filings, estate and probate records, tax records. When we find a property held up by a title problem we believe we can actually help with, we look at who's connected to it, and we reach out. That's usually how you came to hear from us.

Once in a while it runs the other way: an attorney, a title company, or another professional runs into one of these tangles and points it toward us, because untangling them is what we do. But most of the time, it's the record that leads us to you.

We follow the property, not the person. And we don't contact everyone — only where we truly believe there's something we can do.

You'd be surprised how often people don't. It's one of the most common things we see.

Families grow apart. Someone passes, and in the grief and the distance, the paperwork never gets sorted the way it should. Years go by. A property just sits, quietly, with names attached to it that no one ever told. If this is the first you're hearing of it, that doesn't mean it isn't real — it usually means no one was ever in a position to explain it to you.

Asking that is the smart thing to do, and we'd rather you ask it out loud than sit and worry.

Here's the honest answer. This is what we've done for a long time, and we depend entirely on our reputation to keep doing it — a scam burns that on the first try. We work alongside experienced attorneys and title professionals, licensed people with a great deal to lose by putting their name to anything false. We're glad to point you to them, and we'll give you references if you'd like.

And by all means, run everything past your own attorney before you act on it. We're always glad when someone does — it's the last thing a person with bad intentions would ever invite.

This trips up almost everyone, and it's the heart of the whole thing.

You can hold a deed with your name right on it and still not have clear title — if the chain of ownership behind that deed is broken somewhere. When title isn't clear, a title company won't insure it and a bank won't lend on it. So the property can't really change hands. It just sits there, year after year, while the taxes keep adding up.

If you'd like this explained more fully, we wrote a page just for it: What Your Letter Means.

Short version: you reach out, we do the research at no cost to you, we explain what we found in plain English, and you decide what you want to do — every step.

We laid the whole thing out, calmly and in order, on How It Works. Nothing about it commits you to anything.

Nothing comes out of your pocket. You never pay us a fee, and you never put up your own money — we cover the costs of clearing the title and we carry the risk of the work.

What you'd receive, and when, depends on the particular situation — how the property is held, what's owed against it, who else has a stake. Those aren't things we'd ever quote you off a website; they're exactly what we'd walk through together, honestly, on a call, so you can see the whole picture before you decide anything.

That's your right, and sometimes it's the correct call. We only want you to understand what "nothing" tends to mean.

Left alone, these situations rarely fix themselves. The taxes keep climbing. A property can eventually be lost to a tax foreclosure, or simply fall into disrepair while no one's able to act on it. We're telling you this so you can weigh it — not to rush you. There's no clock ticking on our end.

The honest answer is: it depends, and anyone who gives you a quick number over the internet isn't being straight with you.

An undivided interest in an inherited property doesn't work like a simple appraisal. State intestacy law, whether probate was ever filed, how many people share the property, what's owed against it — all of it moves the answer. Untangling exactly that is the thing we actually do. It's the reason a conversation is worth more to you than any figure on a page.