[MassHistPres] Hardship and ownership transfer

[Ralph Slate]

Does anyone have any specific experience with someone who transfers 
property to another owner to avoid having to fix it?

In Springfield, a structure had a substantial fire. The owner received 
an insurance settlement of $760,000. She wanted to tear the structure 
down instead of repairing it (she said it was beyond repair, we were in 
the process of evaluating that).

She then sold the property to someone else for $1, none of the $760,000 
accompanied the sale. The new owner now owns a property with probably at 
least $500,000 of damage, potentially no assets to repair it.

With the original owner, we could have pointed to the insurance money 
and said "there's no hardship because you have enough to fix the 
property". With the new owner, I'm not so sure we could do that since 
there are no assets to look at.

Surely something like this has been tried before. Anyone know of any 
similar cases?

Ralph