Features
Homestead exemption laws typically have four primary features:
- They prevent the forced sale of a home to meet the demands of creditors (however, in most cases homestead exemptions do not apply to forced sales to satisfy mortgages, mechanics liens, or sales to pay property taxes);
- They provide the surviving spouse with shelter;
- They provide an exemption from property taxes which can be applied to a home.
- Allows a tax-exempt homeowner to vote on property tax increases to homeowners over the threshold via bond or millage requests.
For purposes of these statutes, a homestead is the one primary residence of a person, and no other exemption can be claimed on any other property anywhere, even outside the boundaries of the jurisdiction where the exemption is claimed.
In some states, homestead protection is automatic. In many states, however, the homeowner must file a claim for homestead exemption with the state, and will not receive the protections of the law until this has been done. Furthermore, the protection can be lost if the homeowner abandons the protected property by taking up primary residence elsewhere.
Read more about this topic: Homestead Exemption
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—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
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—Herman Melville (1819–1891)