Tina Jones has been trying to help her mother, Elsie Andrews, sell her home at 703 Emerson St. NE, only to encounter severe delays with the probate process.
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This story was supported with funds from Spotlight DC—Capital City Fund for Investigative Journalism.
The modest brick house at 703 Emerson St. NE has been in the Jones family since the Eisenhower administration.
Although Elsie Andrews left D.C. many years ago, she still remembers watching her parents, William and Sarah Jones, tramping up and down the narrow stairs of the two-story house. Her daughter, Tina Jones, recalls having sleepovers with her cousins on the screened-in front porch, waiting for her grandparents to call them in for breakfast the next morning. After William and Sarah passed away in the 1980s, Andrews inherited the house and has kept it in the family. At one point or another, Andrews’ sister, nieces, and even grandnieces have all called the house in North Michigan Park their home.
But even after all that history, Andrews is ready to move on and sell the house. She spent the past 30 years in Kentucky with her husband, Billie, but after he died she became eager to move back to the D.C. area to be closer to Jones and her grandchildren. A big move like that costs a lot of money, though, and at 77, Andrews just can’t get up and down the stairs the way she used to. “I don’t want to lose my momma’s house,” Andrews says, but this is for the best.
Tina found a buyer as soon as she put the house on the market. Who wouldn’t want to live in the lush, quiet neighborhood just a quick walk from the Fort Totten Metro station? Mayor Muriel Bowser herself grew up in a duplex a few blocks over.
Yet, for more than two years now, Andrews and her family have been stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, unable to sell the property. Thanks to a bizarre, uniquely D.C. set of circumstances involving probate records, she can’t prove that she has clear title to the property. And, according to several local attorneys, she’s not alone.
“I’m ready to get my picket sign and gather some friends and head down to Congress and yell, ‘Let my people go,’” says Andrews, no stranger to such demonstrations given her past as a union organizer when she was starting her career in D.C. “I just don’t know how to move the government.”
The Jones family has been trying to sell their home at 703 Emerson Street NE for years, only to be stymied by probate delays.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?fit=780%2C521&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21-1024×684.jpg?resize=780%2C521&ssl=1″ alt=”703 Emerson Street NE house” class=”wp-image-748171″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=1024%2C684&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=768%2C513&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=1536%2C1026&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=1200%2C802&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=1568%2C1047&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21.jpg?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE21-1024×684.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” />
The problem stems from the probate process, in which a division of the D.C. Superior Court sorts through wills, inheritances, unpaid debts, and other financial issues when someone dies. Andrews thought she resolved all that messy business when her parents died, but their names remained on the title to the Emerson Street home for the past four decades. When she tried to remove them from the title so she could sell the house, the court said it needed to locate records of the previous probate proceedings to prove Andrews truly owned the property. That kicked off a Kafkaesque process to demonstrate what ought to be pretty evident: Andrews’ father died in 1981 and left the house to his daughter.
Andrews’ attorney, Michael Forster, put in a request with the court’s probate division for these records in November 2022 and still hasn’t received them. Court officials and local lawyers say this sort of delay happens with some frequency. Decades-old probate records are maintained by both the D.C. Archives and the National Archives and Records Administration, owing to the District’s past under full federal control. It can take the court months, and sometimes years, to track down these case files and get them to people who need them. On some occasions, there are even long gaps between when the probate court secures the records and when they actually notify the people who asked for them, attorneys say.
“My clients will follow up with me months later, and I have to convince them I didn’t do something wrong, because it’s like, ‘Well, how can we not have this?’” says Forster, who estimates he has handled at least four other cases with similar problems as Andrews’.
But finally last week, Andrews got some good news: A probate court judge is letting her move forward with the sale of the home, ruling that “the probability of recovering additional records at this point remains uncertain.” But the long wait has not been without its consequences. Andrews and her family now owe nearly $73,700 in property taxes on the house, according to D.C. records. A cousin who was staying in the home fell behind on payments amid health issues, Jones says, and those problems have compounded amid all this uncertainty.
Attorneys who handle similar probate such cases say this sort of outcome is tragically common. D.C.’s system for handling these records moves so slowly that it has frequently put elderly residents at risk of losing homes that have been in their families for decades, pushing them out of the city in the process.
“Many of our clients are living in areas that have gone through gentrification, living in homes worth upwards of $500,000, even $1 million, and their taxes are going up and up,” says Tina Nelson, a senior managing attorney with Legal Counsel for the Elderly, who has handled 10 cases impacted by extended probate delays in the past four years alone. “D.C. is already dealing with a lack of affordable housing and so this just simply exacerbates the problem if we’re not able to maintain home ownership for these people.”
What’s more, there is very little the D.C. government can do to remedy the issue. The National Archives is a federal agency, and doesn’t spend much time worrying about D.C.’s parochial problems. The local court system is also managed by the feds, owing to an agreement struck three decades ago to bail the District government out of its financial crisis. Congress is the only entity that could do anything to fix the problem, and the city’s residents don’t have any meaningful voting representation at the federal level.
“Our lack of statehood has an impact in all these places where people would not have even thought,” Nelson says.
She notes that Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen introduced legislation last year meant to simplify the probate process, after a report from the Council for Court Excellence and the D.C. Access to Justice Commission detailed a series of problems plaguing families. But the bill would do little to address these particular problems, since they have more to do with logistics and communication with federal entities. (It has yet to advance after receiving a public hearing in June.)
The back yard of the Jones’ home at 703 Emerson Street NE.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?fit=780%2C521&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24-1024×684.jpg?resize=780%2C521&ssl=1″ alt=”703 Emerson Street NE back yard” class=”wp-image-748174″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=1024%2C684&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=768%2C513&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=1536%2C1026&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=1200%2C802&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=1568%2C1047&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24.jpg?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE24-1024×684.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” />
In any other city, this process wouldn’t be nearly so complex. The courts and the archives would be part of the same entity, and might even be located in the same place. But, in D.C., the process is frustratingly fragmented.
For starters, physical probate records are kept in different places based on when a person died. Cases that originated before the city’s Home Rule era, which began in 1974, are managed by the National Archives, according to a spokesperson for the agency. After that, the probate files are managed by the D.C. Archives, overseen by the Secretary of D.C., Kimberly Bassett.
But there’s another wrinkle: The D.C. Archives doesn’t have enough space in its existing Blagden Alley offices to hold all of the paper files in its custody. It relies on the National Archives to store some of those materials, according to Lopez Matthews, D.C.’s state archivist and public records administrator. This could account for why the probate court believes Andrews’ father’s records are managed by the feds, even though he died after 1974.
“It does cause a lot of confusion,” Matthews says, noting that his agency will be able to consolidate most of these records whenever it’s able to build a new facility, currently set to be located at the University of D.C. in Northwest.
In general, the National Archives stores D.C. records at the Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland. When the probate court needs to track down case files there, the court’s Administrative Services Division searches the archives’ online database and then submits a request to access them, according to D.C. courts spokesperson Doug Buchanan. Staff at that division often has to physically retrieve those files, then tell the probate court when they’ve done so to let the case move ahead.
“The division has requested records sometimes two to three times” from the archives before receiving them, Buchanan adds in an email.
If only that was the last complication in this process. Buchanan says he has also heard of instances where court workers have been forced to travel to archives facilities in Philadelphia or Boston to find certain documents (Nelson confirms that she’s handled cases involving trips outside of D.C., too). No one is quite sure why these records would end up transferred to other facilities, and the National Archives’ spokesperson did not respond to follow-up questions on the matter.
The upshot is that the courts, and anyone who needs these case records, are at the mercy of the archives when it comes to actually securing them. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, Nelson says the process slowed to a crawl, with records requests taking “a year or longer” to resolve. Things have improved since then, she says, but it still regularly takes three or four months to track down case files. (And COVID-related delays can’t explain Andrews’ nearly two-year wait.)
The court system is not entirely blameless here, Nelson adds. “We have had experiences where the [court] clerk’s office has misplaced the request that we submitted, and so we’ve had to submit a second request,” she says. Plus, court staffers are supposed to notify attorneys when they’ve secured the records and scanned them into an online portal that lawyers can access. Sometimes they simply don’t do so.
“So now we actually make it a part of our practice just to check periodically online to see whether or not the archive file has been received and scanned,” Nelson says. Buchanan did not answer questions about what accounts for this disconnect.
The Jones family has been trying to sell their home at 703 Emerson Street NE for so long they started to fall behind on taxes for the property, prompting legal action.
” data-medium-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1″ data-large-file=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?fit=780%2C521&ssl=1″ tabindex=”0″ role=”button” src=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22-1024×684.jpg?resize=780%2C521&ssl=1″ alt=”703 Emerson Street NE house tax sale” class=”wp-image-748172″ srcset=”https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=1024%2C684&ssl=1 1024w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1 300w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=768%2C513&ssl=1 768w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=1536%2C1026&ssl=1 1536w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=1200%2C802&ssl=1 1200w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=1568%2C1047&ssl=1 1568w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?resize=400%2C267&ssl=1 400w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22.jpg?w=2000&ssl=1 2000w, https://i0.wp.com/newspack-washingtoncitypaper.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2024/09/PROBATE22-1024×684.jpg?w=370&ssl=1 370w” sizes=”(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px” />
As the archives, the courts, and the attorneys hash things out, families are left in the lurch. Forster says that his clients confronting the issue tend to be older (since people with long-dead relatives tend to have their records stored with the feds more frequently), and they can’t afford to wait years to resolve these proceedings. Maybe they’re like Andrews and they’re looking to sell a piece of property. Or maybe they’re planning their estates and need to be sure their heirs will have clear titles to their homes. Delays in the process can make it harder for people to pass down wealth to the next generation, a persistent problem in a city where Black homeownership rates are already declining.
“Almost all of the people I’ve interviewed had a history of home ownership in the family, but only a handful still had that home in the family,” says Tanya Golash-Boza, a sociologist who wrote a recent book examining how several D.C. neighborhoods gentrified over the past five decades. She sees D.C.’s probate issues as part of her other findings on how Black families have not been able to maintain the high rates of homeownership they achieved in the 1950s and ’60s (not to mention the attendant generational wealth). “More than anything nefarious I’ve observed in the housing market, it’s a structural problem,” she adds.
But for Forster’s familiarity with these particular probate problems, Andrews could’ve found herself among those struggling to realize her family home’s value and keep that money to pass to her kids.
With taxes on the property piling up, the city put the house up for a tax sale two years ago—a Florida company that specializes in buying up such properties and then flipping them won the right to purchase it at auction last year. Forster was able to stave off foreclosure proceedings by asking the court to let this probate process play out, but other families might not be so lucky.
“There’s a lot of misinformation or just miseducation about probate, generally,” Nelson says. “Sometimes people think they completed the process, and then they discover all this.”
Jones, Andrews’ daughter, is hopeful that she’ll be able to get things back on track now that the probate case has finally gotten resolved. Selling the house would help her family pay off the back taxes, and she says she still has a buyer interested in the property. But the delay has caused some negative impacts.
“The market has changed a couple of times now, so the offer we had is dwindling,” Jones says. “The rates are up, houses are not selling like they were at that time. So we’re losing all the way around.”
Forster is hopeful that the family’s struggles can shine a light on the problems with probate, and maybe make a difference for others in similar circumstances. Andrews’ aims are a bit more modest: She just wants a new house big enough so she can take her kitchen table out of storage, and maybe see her grandkids a bit more, too.
“The prices are so much higher here than in Kentucky, Tina says she might have to find me a smaller house,” Andrews says. “But that’s OK … I just want to move back home. I was born and raised in Washington, D.C.”