Need help understanding what personal libility means

Law & Legal
1

I need to know what does the terms, personal liability and no personal liability mean.

We inherited royalties from my mother recently, in which she had not paid county taxes in ten years. She always thought that because it was just royalties it was not tax...."she did not own any land".

Today I was served , along with her asking us to pay 2,000 in back taxes. Beside her name it said, "personal liability", and beside mine and my sisters name, "no personal liability".

I gave the sheriff a copy of her death certificate and he took it with him along with the papers for her.

We have received only one check each, because it has to be at least 100.00 before they issue a check. We figure we only get about 600.00 a year, if that.

We don't know what to do. Actually, we had contacted that lawyers office before about this, but it always was an answering service and they never returned our calls.

Appreciate any help on this.

Thanks,

Sherry

2

I'm not an attorney and won't venture into the question of "personal liability". Yet from the number crunching side I'd say paying $2000 to retain those minerals rights is a fair value, even if it takes 4 to 5 years to break even. Your "investment" by paying off the unpaid tax may continue to provide you a return for decades to come. It's too bad it went unpaid for so long and built up to that amount. Ordinarily the annual property tax on minerals is adjusted to the amount of income it produces and overall is not very high. Good luck with your decision.