The Orange County Public Administrator’s Office has dealt with its share of unusual inheritances.
There was the protection they once had to arrange for a $500,000 ring. And there was the pet eel.
But even for the agency that takes care of a decedent’s assets when no one else can act on that person’s behalf, the upcoming estate sale of Gerald Willits, a Buena Park man who died in August 2014 and left 69 cars in his yard, is “very unusual,” according to Elizabeth Henderson, chief deputy public administrator for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office.
“A lot of times, we get a couple of cars; occasionally we’ll get a fancy sports car,” she said. “But this is massively interesting.”
And not only because of the cars. The vehicles for auction are just part of what is likely a multimillion-dollar estate involving a half-dozen Southern California properties and other assets, the proceeds of which have no clear heir.
The auto auction, slated for Sept. 1, is expected to yield between $60,000 and $150,000 from 110 “lots,” beginning with a 1930 Ford Model A Roadster and ending with a 1965 Volkswagen van, with dozens of Fords, Chevys, rusted flathead V8s – even an experimental aircraft – in between.
“This is a neat little collection,” said Ray Claridge, owner of Ken Porter Auctions in Carson, which will conduct the estate sale of barn-find vehicles on behalf of the Public Administrator in its Santa Ana parking lot.
But it is also a hoarder’s collection. It isn’t high-value product. It isn’t like there’s a Duesenberg chassis laying in the corner somewhere.
“It will be a bargain hunter’s paradise for sure,” Claridge said. “These are pretty much common-man cars, and some of the better ones are the early Fords. There are a lot of collectors for that stuff.”
What is lacking is a legally recognized beneficiary.
The cars’ owner, Willits, created three known wills – in 1990, 1996 and 2002. They all disinherited his only child – Melinda Willits Sanchez, who lives in Hawaii – said Adrienne Heckman, supervising deputy county counsel representing the Public Administrator in the Willits matter.
The most recent known will, from 2002, was found in the trunk of one of Willits’ cars after his death. It names the Long Beach charity Scottish Rite Bodies as his beneficiary, but it isn’t considered valid because it’s a copy.
That leaves the earlier will, from 1996. In that one, Willits left his estate to his parents, who at the time were already deceased.
“Normally, the 2002 will, if we had the original, should have been the winner,” Heckman said.
Instead, the county is handling an estate that is up for grabs. Among those who have made claims are Willits Sanchez, who is suing for the proceeds, as well as Willits’ first and second cousins and other individuals who rented and cared for his properties.
“Our position is that the 1996 will was revoked as a matter of law … and that the estate should go intestate and that our client, the daughter, the child, will take it all,” said Willits Sanchez’s attorney, Richard J. Pinto of Laguna Niguel. “It’s got to be litigated before it’s determined. … The court is going to decide.
In addition to dozens of vehicles, Willits also owned at least four homes in Orange County that, together, are worth at least $1.2 million. Three of those homes will be auctioned Saturday.
While an official valuation of the entire estate has not been filed with the court, a trust and two other Southern California homes, once owned by Willits’ mother, could likely push its total value above $2 million. Henderson says the original estate planning documents for Willits’ mother were found in a tool box outside his house.
That’s a lot of assets for a man who, in the eyes of a former neighbor and his tenants, appeared to be of extraordinarily humble means.
Gerald Willits, who died at age 76 of coronary artery disease, was a plumber and “a very private person,” said Laurence Braun, who lived next door to Willits for 12 years and helped take out his trash, clean his yard and make meals.
It was Braun who found Willits’ body last August, after walking next door to ask what Willits would like for breakfast, he said.
Willits liked to dine at McDonald’s and at the Salt & Pepper Restaurant in Fullerton, according to Braun. He enjoyed playing the trumpet and kept several musical instruments in his living room. And he loved cars – a passion that may have been instilled in him by a grandfather, with whom he once took a trip in a Ford Model T, according to a 1967 article that ran in the Long Beach Independent newspaper.
Of all the cars he kept in his yard, Willits drove only his Saturn. Most of the other cars did not run.
“When he described work around the yard, he would say, ‘Go to the red Chevy and make a right. When you get to the blue Ford, you make a left.’ That’s how he described for me to get around the yard,” Braun said.
“When you were on the ground, they looked like a mess. But when you got up high and looked down, they were actually all in rows,” Braun added. “It wasn’t quite as much of a mess as you would think.”
Braun says he was anticipating payment for his help in the form of a 1918 Ford truck and parts for a 1917 Ford. Willits died before Braun could receive the cars, said Braun, whose official claim for the two Fords was rejected by the county.
Known for being thrifty and eccentric, Willits was also a pack rat. The city of Buena Park pursued him for property maintenance violations for years. In 2001 he was cited for trash, overgrown trees, peeling paint, a lack of running water and housing inoperative vehicles on his premises.
Willits eventually came to an agreement with the city in which he was allowed to store a certain number of vehicles on his land, according to Michael Reiter, the lawyer who was representing him at the time of his death.
More recently, the city pursued Willits for endangering the public’s health and safety by not maintaining his home, which the Public Administrator said was infested with rats and bees.
Buena Park’s actions “were one of the worst abuses of code enforcement that I’ve ever seen,” said Reiter, who was helping Willits clean up his property before he died.
Like his own residence, Willits’ rental homes were similarly ill maintained, according to his tenants, who thought their landlord was “weird,” but also generous and kind.
Willits often did not cash tenants’ rent checks, nor did he raise their rent for decades, according to Rodrigo Mares, who lived for 22 years with his mother at Willits’ property on Laxore Street in Anaheim. That residence will be auctioned Saturday with a starting bid of $312,000.
“He didn’t want anything to cost him money,” Mares said. “I did a lot of the work myself – plumbing, roofing, everything that needed to be done to keep the house looking decent.”
When Mares’ mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, Mares says Willits told him that the house would be theirs when he passed away.
Tenants at Willits’ other rental properties on Crestwood Drive in Anaheim and Flower Street in Santa Ana all recount versions of the same story: Willits came to their homes with a blank piece of paper at some point in the mid-2000s and asked them to sign it, promising he would leave them the property when he died. They claim those papers were in Willits’ house.
Henderson says papers that indicated those intentions were never found.
“A lot of people think the Public Administrator is trying to get the estate. That doesn’t happen ever,” said Henderson, adding that her office is entitled to a maximum of 4 percent of the estate’s value under California probate law.
“He has heirs. No matter what happens, the estate won’t go to the government.”
Contact the writer: scarpenter@ocregister.com or on Twitter: @OCRegCarpenter
