In 2018, a Texas woman’s home was auctioned for $20,000 to pay an unrelated judgment; after years of litigation, an October 21 appeals ruling let her continue arguing it had homestead protection

Lankford says the property was her home for over 20 years and should not have been auctioned. (Representational photo)

A Texas woman whose home was auctioned for $20,000 in 2018 to recover money owed in an unrelated dispute was given another chance by the court to challenge the sale on Wednesday. After years of litigation, the Texas Court of Appeals ruled that her claim deserves further examination. However, the ruling does not mean she has recovered the property.Francine Lee Lankford says the property had been her home for more than 20 years and should never have been put up for auction. According to the judgment document available on Justia, the dispute began with a small-claims judgment against Lankford in Lee County in 2017. The money she owed was not connected to the purchase of her house or any unpaid property taxes. Even so, the following year, her property at 418 Taylor Road in Elgin, Bastrop County, was put up for sale to recover the amount.The property was bought by Tracy Ortiz for $20,000 at the auction held on September 4, 2018. She was the only bidder at the auction. Lankford subsequently went to court seeking to recover ownership and possession of the property, arguing that the sale should not have taken place.At the centre of her challenge was a protection available to homeowners under Texas law, known as homestead protection. The provision prevents a person’s main home from being forcibly sold to recover ordinary debts. Lankford maintained that her property qualified for this protection, while Ortiz argued that she had already moved elsewhere.

Home was never abandoned

Lankford told the court that she had been living at the Elgin property since the mid-1990s. According to her account, she had used it as her main residence for more than two decades and had never treated another property as her permanent home.She said she lived there with her partner, Frank Vickers. The couple paid utility bills, looked after the house and received their mail at the address.In a sworn statement, Lankford also said she had received no notice of the planned sale and had never agreed to it. She maintained that she had not rented out the property as an investment or intended to settle permanently elsewhere.Meanwhile, Ortiz said she relied on records suggesting that Lankford had begun living at another address in Lee County. According to Ortiz, this meant the Elgin property was no longer entitled to the protection Lankford was claiming.

A questionable auction

Lankford’s challenge was not limited to the property’s status as her home. She also raised concerns about the way the 2018 auction had been handled.Bastrop County Constable Salvador Abreo was responsible for overseeing the sale. However, the person who announced and accepted bids was Noe Reyes, an employee of the law firm McCreary, Veselka, Bragg & Allen.Reyes explained that Abreo had asked him to handle the bidding because he regularly performed that work at county auctions. Abreo was present throughout the process.Reyes said his work ended after closing the bidding and that he had not handled payment or other parts of the transaction.But Lankford argued that Reyes’s involvement made the sale improper. The appeals court disagreed, finding that the constable had remained in charge and that Reyes had merely assisted with announcing the bids. This meant Lankford could not overturn the auction on that particular ground.

The October 21 ruling changes story

Although Lankford’s objection to the auction procedure failed, her argument about the home’s protected status helped her case.Ortiz maintained that she had bought the property in good faith and should be allowed to keep it. She also argued that the sale had already been completed.But the appeals court found that these arguments did not settle the central question. If the property was still Lankford’s protected home in September 2018, selling it to recover the unrelated judgment would not have been legally valid.The judges considered Lankford’s sworn account alongside the records presented by Ortiz. While those records raised questions about where Lankford had been living, they did not conclusively establish that she had abandoned the Elgin property as her home.The court found that the conflicting evidence needed to be examined further rather than being resolved against Lankford at this stage.It therefore overturned the earlier ruling in Ortiz’s favour and returned that part of the dispute to the lower court for further proceedings.