Back in 2013 I wrote about my dead Aunt G. who despite being very dead was still getting the Senior Citizen Homestead Deduction. I chose not to out my dead aunt because I wanted to give whomever I was related to enough time to probate the will and get auntie’s estate all straightened out. I figured I’d wait 5 years after her death for her estate to clear everything up, but due to a few things that have happened I’m gonna have to air this out earlier than planned.
I’d been keeping the voice mail where one of my relatives informed me of Aunt Geraldine’s death back in January of 2012. Well apparently voice mails have a shelf life and somehow it did not get saved in a backup. It was my reminder when looking at my list of voicemails to every so often to check and see if she was listed as the owner of her house in SE.
And recently I was speaking with another relative about the situation. I mentioned that the property was still in Aunt Geraldine’s name and the relative mentioned that her will was probated sometime ago.
I’ve held off long enough.
Uncle Randolph (pictured sitting on the right) has been dead since the late 80s
and after his death, her health went south. Her last years were spent in a nursing home somewhere in Maryland. She hadn’t lived in the house since the mid to late 2000s.
Before her death, she paid $570, and $635 in property taxes in 2010 and 2011. She died January 13, 2012, that year she paid $925 in property taxes, but they went down in 2013 to $799, $786 in 2014, and $865 in 2015. This year it appears her tax bill is $626. The house is valued by the city to be worth $220,810 (2016 assessment), but despite being very dead she (or whomever is running her estate) is getting the benefit of her (and my late uncle’s) tenure in the house, with the 10% cap on how high taxes can go up and double bonus points of the Senior Citizen Homestead Deduction.
It is great that DC has the deduction for seniors. However, the city does a poor job of checking up on seniors to see if they are still alive and kicking. I can’t judge them too harshly with Aunt Geraldine because she still does not appear in the Social Security Death Index. However, she’s not the only dead person in DC paying real property taxes with the Senior Citizen Homestead Deduction.
Mrs. Geraldine Lewis is very dead, laid to rest in a Maryland grave and should be free of the burden of taxes.