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Rule number 1.
When you find money don't ing tell anyone especially the people who's house you are renovating. Hide money away for a short period of time while slowing "washing" it to current untrackable cash without raising any flags.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/5380826.html
Dec. 15, 2007, 5:27PM
Who gets the fortune found in house walls?
The contractor and homeowner claiming right to $182,000 cache
By JIM NICHOLS
Cox News Service
CLEVELAND — Most folks are happy to reach into the pocket of a little-used jacket and find a long-forgotten $10 bill.
Multiply that feeling by 18,200 times and you will understand how Lakewood, Ohio, home-improvement contractor Bob Kitts felt when he pulled a giant cache of Depression-era cash from the walls of an 83-year-old Cleveland home he was renovating.
As he was ripping plaster from bathroom-wall studs, Kitts found bundles of bills totaling $182,000 wrapped in pre-World War II Cleveland Plain Dealer news pages and tucked into boxes. The money is in such good condition, and some of the bills are so rare and collectible, that one currency appraiser valued the treasure at up to $500,000, Kitts said.
But there's a hitch:
The walls from which Kitts pulled the money aren't his walls. The house isn't his house. Nobody knows for certain whose money it is.
Yet Kitts claims it as his own. He and his lawyer have dusted off an obscure, centuries-old legal doctrine called "treasure trove" — a common-law finders-keepers provision — that they believe gives him top claim to the wealth.
Kitts' lawyer has drafted a lawsuit that he hopes will force homeowner Amanda Reece to turn over the money she has kept, or at least share it.
Then again, he may not be a cent to the richer. Several court rulings have established precedent that undermines the applicability of the treasure-trove doctrine under these cir stances, said Reece's lawyer, John Chambers. Reece would have accommodated Kitts, but the handyman got greedy, Chambers said. Now Reece has no intention of backing down in the face of what she considers a shakedown.
"In fact, I look forward to asserting our position," Chambers said in an interview.
It may be up to a judge to decide, said Heidi Robertson, a professor who teaches property law at Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. And that judge may have a challenge.
"It's certainly not a slam-dunk," Robertson said.
Kitts and Reece, high school classmates in the 1980s, celebrated together one morning in May 2006. He was in his second day of gutting her bathroom when he found a box below the medicine cabinet. Inside it was $25,200 in pristine bills.
"I almost passed out," Kitts recalled. "It was the ultimate contractor fantasy."
He called Reece. She rushed home. Flushed with excitement, they found another steel box in the wall, tied to the end of a wire nailed to a stud. In it was more than $100,000, Kitts said.
They found two more boxes, filled with a mix of money and religious memorabilia.
Kitts took some of the currency for an appraisal and learned that many of the $10 bills were rare 1929-series Cleveland Federal Reserve bank notes, worth about $85 each. There also were $500 bills and one $1,000 bill.
They traced the home's Depression-era ownership to a businessman named Peter Dunne, Kitts said. The money bundles had "P. Dunne" written on them, but no sign of its origin. Dunne apparently died unmarried and childless, leaving behind a mystery — a fortune that would be worth an inflation-adjusted $2.7 million in today's money.
But the joy, friendship and contractual bonds of the former classmates dissolved like melting snow amid the heat of all that money. Now Kitts and Reece speak to each other only through their lawyers.
Rule number 1.
When you find money don't ing tell anyone especially the people who's house you are renovating. Hide money away for a short period of time while slowing "washing" it to current untrackable cash without raising any flags.
Greed is a ed up thing.
who the owns the house ?
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
"I could break you...in two pieces over my knee. I could dump the stock just to burn your ass, but I happen to want the company, and I need your block of shares".
Greed is my DIL's middle name
Should go to the owner of the house. Contractor should get a few Gs as a reward.
Bringing lawyers into it tells you how ed up our brethren are nowadays.
I didn't know you could find something in someone elses home and claim it as your own, seems pretty absurd to me.
She owns the house, it's her money as far as I'm concerned, especially considering the fact that the guy that put the money there died unmarried and childless...
I think they should spend it all on a long legal battle.
Split it 50/50.
Give it to me.
You're probably right. The only people who are going to get rich are the attorneys.
I'd find it fairly funny if the courts decided that the money belongs to Peter Dunne's heirs.
I remodeled a house I owned a few years back that was built in the 1950's. The only thing I found in the walls were some candy wrappers that disintegrated when I touched them and a couple of empty cigarette packs. I tried to share half the treasure with my contractor but he declined.Actually, I think I tried to share all of it with him. "Throw that sh!t away" I believe was my exact offer.
That would be hilarious and fitting.
I thought after the long spaces it was gonna be ***Cue 70's Porn Music***.You're probably right. The only people who are going to get rich are the attorneys.
I'd find it fairly funny if the courts decided that the money belongs to Peter Dunne's heirs.
I remodeled a house I owned a few years back that was built in the 1950's. The only thing I found in the walls were some candy wrappers that disintegrated when I touched them and a couple of empty cigarette packs. I tried to share half the treasure with my contractor but he declined.
But the world is full of suprises.
moral of the story: when renovating your house... do it yourself.
I wholeheartedly agree.
That's really sad. End of a friendship for a fortune that will go to the winning legal team. Sounds like the chick tried to do the right thing and planned to share until the contractor got greedy. How unfortunate.
it belongs to the homeowner, it was found on their property.....it shouldn't even be questioned.
I think you're right. It would be like the contractor going into the closet and saying "hey, I just found this great jacket. Under the treasure finders ruling from 1923 I'm en led to keep it!"
Not gonna happen.
Watch the government take it. lol
..........or a contracter goes into your garage and says "hey, I found a great MB S-550, I think I'll just drive it home and keep it."
I agree with most of you that the homeowner has the rights to it. However, especially since they are friends, she probably should have offered him a percentage when he found it. She might not have ever found it without him.
I think I would have given him 25%.
Split it in half.
Exactly.
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