Wayside Church updates For beneficiaries of the estates, these are the upcoming dates November 8, 2023 - now postponed - Court hearing in Grand Rapids on approval of the proposed settlement Update: in late October, the Court postponed the November 8 hearing date due to the number of objections that some claimants have filed, and will reschedule it for a later time. We expect to hear from Kroll Settlement Services, the agent for the plaintiff class, but again the time frame is uncertain. We predict that funds will be sent to qualifying claimants within one or two months after the court rules on the approval of the settlements. When funds are received, we will be filing an inventory with the probate court. From that point, for most estates, you can expect that it will take another couple of months to finalize distributions.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE BACKGROUND Under the General Property Tax Act (GPTA), after a county forecloses on a parcel of land for unpaid property taxes in default for more than three years, the parcel becomes the county’s property on entry of a judgment of foreclosure, and then can be sold at auction. The proceeds are then used to pay the back property taxes and any accumulated interest and penalties. The GPTA went further and permitted the county to retain all of the proceeds from auction sales, and did not require that the excess funds be paid over to the defaulting landowner. In the case of Rafaeli v. Oakland County, decided in 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the sections of the GPTA that allowed counties to retain the excess funds were unconstitutional, as a taking of private property without compensation. A description of the Rafaeli case can be found at this link. The Kroll Settlement Site provides updated information on the status of the class action lawsuit.