Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Where will all the children go?

Michael Jackson facing foreclosure:

Yahoo.com:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Michael Jackson's famed Neverland Valley Ranch in California will be foreclosed and sold on March 19 unless the pop star pays a balance of nearly $25 million, property records showed on Tuesday.

FoxNews.com celebrity columnist Roger Friedman reported on the Web site http://www.foxnews.com/) that Jackson has been formally apprised of the foreclosure and that legal documents have also been filed with the Santa Barbara County Recorder's office.

"You are in default of a deed of trust ...," Jackson was told in the five-page filing, according to a copy of the document published by FoxNews.com. "Unless you take action to protect your property it may be sold at a public sale."

According to the documents, if Jackson fails to pay the outstanding balance, estimated at $24.5 million, Neverland would be sold to the highest bidder at a public auction on the courthouse steps.

The county recorder's Web site shows that a Notice of Trustees Sale was filed against Neverland Valley Ranch on Monday but no further details were available and a spokeswoman for the office declined to comment.

Jackson's publicist, Raymone Bain, did not return calls seeking comment on the foreclosure notice.

The onetime "King of Pop" has owned the 2,800-acre (1,133-ha) ranch in the rolling foothills above the California coast since 1988, naming it after the whimsical island where children never grow up in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan stories.

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