Gordon: Where There’s a Will, There’s Wealth for Philly

REGISTER OF WILLS Tracey Gordon plans to recover wealth for Philadelphia and its families.

BY TONY WEST
Tracey Gordon has, if not a hard act to follow, at least a long act.

The new Philadelphia Register of Wills manages an office that has been continuously busy since 1682. Its vital main mission is to record the legal ties that bind most families to their wealth across generations: marriage licenses and wills. Remember that if you are thinking on creating your will, you might want to check the will making costs to have everything covered.

Gordon’s predecessor, Ron Donatucci, served for 40 of those years. The calm attorney made it his career, operating an elected fiefdom so smoothly and reliably that no one in a scandal-prone city ever thought to attack his work or vie for his job – until Gordon came along.

In 2019 she trounced the incumbent in the primary, showing shrewd political skills across the city. Now, halfway through her term, the city – despite the chaos caused by COVID – is relieved to find that the Register of Wills’ business is, well, still not broken.

But Gordon also arrived with a mission: to fix Philadelphia’s lamentable horde of intestate homeowners and “tangled titles” that effectively disinherit many families, often of low income. Messy property records keep houses dilapidated and vacant – pressing money out of whole neighborhoods and spreading decay in its wake.

2022 is a wise time to size up her efforts to date.

That feisty block captain, a lifelong activist in grassroots issues of Southwest Philly, had worked under City Commission Chair Stephanie Singer. She campaigned as an independent Democrat for City Commission, City Council and State rep before seizing on an opportunity to knock Donatucci from his perch.

She moved cautiously to revamp administration once elected, though. Deputy Register Lou DiRenzo, who has served since 1983, remains in his post along with many other staffers. “Why would I get rid of knowledge? Donatucci ran a well-oiled machine. We have generational knowledge, just like a law firm. We have 70 employees and make decisions collectively,” said Gordon. She boosted the decision-making power of administrative assistants.

What People Don’t Know . . .

Education was Gordon’s first target. It’s true that almost no one knows what this particular County office does, even when planning a marriage or coping with a death. And what families don’t know can hurt them.

“Our first objective was to make sure everybody understood what we do, whether you own property or not,” Gordon explained. “To make sure people preserve, oversee and transfer generational wealth. In order to get benefits of taxpayers’ dollars, you have to know the rules. This is the kind of will you are going to make. If you own property, this is the process your family has to take when you die. You must assign an executor, pay all debts, do necessary business like going to the Recorder of Deeds.

“You do not want your family to be fighting.”

Gordon began to gear up a public education strategy in the first two months of 2020. Then COVID hit.

But people were still dying. And people were still getting married. It was a challenge for every City office.

“We were the first operation convert with plexiglass, desks 6 feet apart, face masks, all standards required,” Gordon said. “Everybody had to sign in by computer about their disease status or they could not come to work.

“I felt, ‘I can’t mess this up. Everybody is looking at me because I’m not a lawyer.’”

The office has remained continuously open to the public by appointment only.

COVID choked off most in-person kinds of government outreach. But social media leapt to fill the breach. The register has launched two online educational series aimed at a general public which often doesn’t know what to do with the property they own.

Unlike other major cities, Philadelphia was built with a housing stock largely of small homeowners. Even when these houses are converted into rental units, they often remain possessions of families with little business experience and modest income. Poor tenants lead to impoverished owners.

TANGLED TITLES as a share of total neighborhood housing. Graphic by Pew Charitable Trusts

Low-income communities (with which Philadelphia is stocked) are filled with older buildings whose owners cannot afford to maintain them. This leads to property damage, lack of insurance and abandonment – which lowers the worth not only of that family but of the whole neighborhood.

“I’ve been a block captain for over 20 years,” Gordon advised. “One abandoned house or one house selling drugs on the block can bring a whole block down. People squat in them, fires happen, property values drop. We live in rowhomes, really close to each other.”

Building Wealth in Families

“Generational wealth” is Gordon’s banner: ensuring that ordinary people find ways to grow their chief capital investment and pass it on to their descendants – a step where Black and brown people have long been disadvantaged.

One online video series is called “Plan. Prepare. Protect.” In it, visiting dignitaries discuss the problems and methods involved in real-estate title inheritance. Another is ““The Register Reacts,” in which Gordon and a staff attorney hijack Hollywood film clips for comedy points about wills and the mistakes people make. (If “The Game of Thrones” can’t show the perils of careless inheritance planning, what will?)

Both series are regularly pushed on Facebook and are available on the Register of Wills’ website.

This year, Gordon hopes to buy advertising space on newspapers and billboards to pump public awareness of her cause.

She will be aided by growing attention to “tangled titles” – properties in legal limbo because of unclear ownership, chiefly driven by owners and their heirs who failed to bequeath deeds in an organized manner, even when family members continue to use them.

“Word-of-mouth wills are not valid in Pennsylvania,” Gordon explained. “It has to be written down or we have to use state intestate law to figure out who inherits what. And in a lot of cases, we have people living in a home where it’s passed incorrectly through multiple generations – making the problem a lot more complicated and expensive to fix.”

Off-the-books houses cannot be sold or borrowed against. People cannot obtain free money from the City for repairs. Mortgages cannot be renegotiated. Abandonment spreads.

Tangled titles “make gentrification worse. They increase crime and drugs and violence. Businesses leave, families break up and fight, communities drift apart and suffer,” Gordon charges.

It’s a big problem for the city as a whole. The register asserts 10,000 homes are ensnared by them, leading to $1.4 billion worth of dead capital – particularly in Zip codes 19132, 19134, 19139, 19140, 19142 and 19143 in the North, West, Northwest and Southwest.

HOW VIOLENCE goes along with real-estate title problems. Graphics by Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and Pew Charitable Trusts

But if one house with a tangled title is cleared up. Its value will increase by 22%, said Gordon.

A recent Pew study estimated 10,000 properties here are sitting on $1.4 billion worth of dead capital. “We are one of poorest cities, but I have a solution,” Gordon said.

Tackling Tangled Titles

The register has recently launched a new initiative called Probate Deferment Initiative. Her office will defer payment of the probate fee, which can be about $500 per estate. If the house has multiple generations of deceased owners, costs multiply. “We defer that fee until you sell the property, so long as you are living in the house,” she said. “Also, the Department of Records will waive the deed filing fee. We also connect families with legal assistance.”

Gordon’s mission was boosted by a measure introduced by Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson (at Large) and passed this month, which assigns other City resources to the problem.

In the meantime, Gordon’s office has untangled 14 titles on its own, with no budget. If she can wangle an extra allocation from the City this spring, she hopes to boost that number.

Education isn’t limited to homeowners. Gordon has trained all elected officials in the role of the Register of Wills to maintain marriage and probate records.

She emphasizes that wills are not limited to real property. “It is not about being rich or owning a house. It’s about being responsible.” Gordon points out, “You may own jewelry or family photo albums. You might be taking care of minor children or a disabled relative. “Whom you want to take care of them is spelled out in a will. We have to start making wills!”

The Register of Wills office is a small City budget with a State function. It collects title-transfer fees for the State, $90 million last year. Its operational budget of $5 million is generally self-sustaining. Gordon says it cleared in its last audit.

What more can it achieve? Gordon starts off this year with ambition. “We are at a turning point,” she said. “We just have to talk to people and get the word out.”

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