(The facts are real although liberties have been taken in order to put this essay into story form.)

Consider this.  There is a small community of fifty two families who live in a communal building called a condominium.  They have been paying the builder of their homes a considerable amount of money each month because he held a lease on the property which was considered legal a half century ago.  The 52 families in this condominium were never consulted nor informed that the lease owned by the builder, now deceased, was sold to something called a Limited Liability Corporation.  In other words, the people living there were sold along with the lease and have to continue to pay their shares of that lease IN PERPETUITY.

It was a scandal some years ago and the state lawmakers made it possible for the people living in the condominium to buy that lease. As is often the case, the legal costs to enquire about how to go about this purchase are very high.  Many of the people would continue to pay their share of the lease.  Some of the people did not care about efforts to buy the lease because their heirs would end up with the problem and they did not want to get involved.

The elected leadership of the condominium was incensed at the notion that their dwelling was bought and sold AND them along with it. The problem was that they had not been told of this new arrangement – that an LLC now owned the land the building is on and it now expected payments will continue as before. Not having been informed that the builder had died and his heirs now were squabbling over his financial affairs, the elected leadership wrote out the checks and kept them because of the unsettled conditions.  There was no intention of NOT paying the monthly fee to live in this building.

One very clever internet-wise woman found the notification of the sale of the building by one of the heirs to this LLC.  Meanwhile, no official notice was given the 52 families that they were to continue to be in servitude “for ever” although there were laws mitigating their helplessness in dealing with lawyers and the heirs of that now deceased builder. Because no notification to the condominium was ever made, the officers of the association had no knowledge of what transpired and to whom and where to send their monthly payments.

Upon an exchange of letters by an officer of the Association and the lawyer who was part of the LLC it was discovered that holding the checks was not proper and a fine imposed if not continued. The building and the 52 families could be sold to pay this debt.  This is the bare bones of the story. More later.