Judges on Maryland's highest court questioned Monday a new law that requires people owning ground rents to register or lose them, an attempt by lawmakers to end the antiquated property laws.
Charles J. Muskin, whose grandfather's estate had about 300 ground rents, contends that losing ground rents for failing to register them amounts to an unconstitutional taking of private property. Muskin, an attorney arguing the case on his own behalf, registered between half and two-thirds of his ground rents during the three-year window allotted in the 2007 law, calling the process cumbersome.
"They just can't take away a property right if you fail to register, when you've got a perfectly valid deed," Muskin told the Court of Appeals. Deeds contain ground rent information.
New ground rent laws were enacted after a series of articles in The Baltimore Sun indicated that some people were losing their homes for failing to pay small sums in ground rents.
The reform measures signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley abolished the legal process that ground rent owners used to seize houses, barred the creation of new ground rents and required ground rent owners to register their holdings with the state by September 2010 or lose them. The interest in the land not registered essentially went to the homeowner.
The state registered 85,095 ground rents by the deadline, most of them in Baltimore.
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