O.C.G.A. § 48-4-46 (2019)
Form of notice of foreclosure of right to redeem; service
(a) The notice provided for in Code Section 48-4-45 shall be written or printed, or written in part and printed in part, and shall be in substantially the following form: Take notice that: The right to redeem the following described property, to wit: after the will expire and be forever foreclosed and barred on and day of , .
The tax deed to which this notice relates is dated the day of , , and is recorded in the office of the Clerk of the Superior Court of County, Georgia, in Deed Book at page . The property may be redeemed at any time before the day of , , by payment of the redemption price as fixed and provided by law to the undersigned at the following address: . Please be governed accordingly.
(b) The purchaser at the tax sale or his heirs, successors, or assigns, as the case may be, shall make out an original notice in substantially the form prescribed in subsection (a) of this Code section and one copy of the notice for each person to be served with the notice. The purchaser shall deliver the notice and the copies together with a list of the persons to be served to the sheriff of the county in which the land is located not less than 45 days before the date set in each notice for the expiration of the right to redeem. Within 15 days after delivery to him, the sheriff shall serve a copy of the notice personally or by deputy upon each of the persons included on the list furnished him who reside in the county. The sheriff shall make an entry of the service on the original copy of the notice. Leaving a copy of the notice at the residence of any person required to be served with the notice shall be a sufficient service of the notice.
(c) If the sheriff personally or by deputy makes an entry that he is unable for any reason to effect service upon any person required to be served, the person who requested that the service be made shall forthwith cause a copy of the notice to be published once a week for two consecutive weeks in the newspaper in which the sheriff’s advertisements for the county are published, unless that notice is being published as provided in paragraph (3) of subsection (a) of Code Section
Annotations
JUDICIAL DECISIONS
Constitutionality. - Notice to persons outside the county under O.C.G.A. § 48-3-9(b) and subsections (b) and (c) of O.C.G.A. § 48-4-46 are not in accord with the requirements of due process because an owner of a security deed or mortgage who lives outside the county in which the land is located will only receive published notice of the foreclosure of the right to redeem. Funderburke v. Kellet, 257 Ga. 822, 364 S.E.2d 845 (1988).
It is not presumed that the General Assembly intended to enable a tax sale purchaser to forego any methods of notice of foreclosure of the right to redeem which might be required by the due process clause, and the words "for any reason" in O.C.G.A. § 48-4-46(c) are construed to mean that notice by publication is permissible only if a sheriff's inability to effect personal service satisfies the constitutional mandate of due process. Hamilton v. Renewed Hope, Inc., 277 Ga. 465, 589 S.E.2d 81 (2003).
Responsibility of purchasers. - Purchasers of a business were required to establish a fund sufficient to cover unpaid taxes regardless of the existence of other claims superior to the state tax execution. Collins v. Lesters, Inc., 225 Ga. App. 405, 484 S.E.2d 62 (1997).
No record of successful completion of foreclosure of redemption rights. - Buyer's claim of foreclosure of all rights to redeem property purchased by the buyer at a tax sale failed because the county real estate records did not contain an entry memorializing successful completion of the foreclosure of the right of redemption as provided by O.C.G.A. § 48-4-46(d); a corporation thus only had notice that the buyer, as a later tax deed grantee, held an inchoate or defeasible title, which could have been perfected on foreclosure of all senior redemption rights. The corporation stood in the position of a good-faith purchaser for value without notice. Washington v. McKibbon Hotel Group, Inc., 284 Ga. 262, 664 S.E.2d 201 (2008).
Reasonable efforts at providing notice not established. - When the assignee of a party who purchased certain real property at a tax sale unsuccessfully tried to give the property's owner notice of the foreclosure of the assignee's right to redeem the property by personal service at the owner's address as found in tax and deed records for the subject property, publication could not be constitutionally used to give the owner notice of the foreclosure until further efforts were made to provide the owner notice, absent evidence that other channels of information to locate the owner were not reasonably available, or that use of those channels would have been impractical. Hamilton v. Renewed Hope, Inc., 277 Ga. 465, 589 S.E.2d 81 (2003).
Reasonable efforts at providing notice established. - There was no evidence in the record showing that the notice of barment was ever provided to the sheriff by the purchaser for service; consequently, there was no evidence that the sheriff violated duties regarding service of the notice of barment as alleged. Tharp v. Vesta Holdings I, LLC, 276 Ga. App. 901, 625 S.E.2d 46 (2005).
Bankruptcy. - Tax sale purchaser creditor's motion for relief from the automatic stay under 11 U.S.C. § 362(d) was denied, and the debtor could not yet proceed to foreclose on debtor's equity of redemption under the barment provisions of O.C.G.A. §§ 48-4-45 and 48-4-46 because the foreclosure was filed after the chapter 13 bankruptcy petition. Greyfield Res., Inc. v. Drummer (In re Drummer), 457 Bankr. 912 (Bankr. N.D. Ga. 2011).
Cited in Southerland v. Bradshaw, 252 Ga. 294, 313 S.E.2d 92 (1984); Dixon v. Conway, 262 Ga. 709, 425 S.E.2d 651 (1993).
RESEARCH REFERENCES
Am. Jur. 2d. - 30 Am. Jur. 2d, Executions, § 458. 72 Am. Jur. 2d, State and Local Taxation, § 911 et seq.
ALR. - Tax title or deed as subject to attack for want of notice of application for tax deed or of expiration of redemption period, where a statute makes tax deed conclusive evidence of matters preliminary to its issuance or limits attack thereon to specific grounds or exempts deed from attack for procedural irregularities or omissions, 134 A.L.R. 796.
Statutory limitation of period for attack on tax deed as affected by failure to comply with statutory requirement as to notice before tax deed, 5 A.L.R.2d 1021.
Right of interested party receiving due notice of tax sale or of right to redeem to assert failure or insufficiency of notice to other interested party, 45 A.L.R.4th 447.