QUESTION

I have been told that we have to hire a guardian ad litem in order to get a childs name off of a piece of property. Is there any way to just get permi

Asked on Mar 15th, 2012 on Real Estate - New Mexico
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permission from the courts to do this. The deed should not have been changed as there was a loan on the property, but it was added in case something happened to current owner when she was going in for surgery without realizing she should not have done this due to the loan.
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Real Estate Law Attorney serving Anniston, AL at Isom Stanko & Senter, LLC
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Your facts are not stated clearly enough for me to understand what the state of title was prior to adding the child's name, or why the "loan" against the property should make any difference. Let me just say that, by adding the name of a minor to the title makes that child an "part owner" of the property.  The child become an owner just like the other owners.  To remove the child's name is to take the ownership interest away from the child.  No one has the right to do that and no one should have the right to do that --- without paying the child a fair market price for the asset taken away from him.  When a proposal is made in court to do that, the court will always require that the child be represented in court by a court-appointed lawyer called a Guardian ad litem.  That lawyer's job is to protect the interests of the child.  In this case, the lawyer's job would be to see that the child is fairly compensated for his loss of an ownership interest.  It is not relevant that it might have been a "mistake" to have added the child's name to the title.  Doing so created an ownership interest.  (Now, there may be a way to challenge the validity of the deed into the child by showing there was no consideration for the transfer.  An attack on the validity of the original transfer would have to be defended by the Guardian ad litem.   
Answered on Mar 15th, 2012 at 6:22 PM

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