Frequently Asked Questions

If you are a client of Black Swan Refunds, you do not have to appear in court, except under the rarest of circumstances. It has never happened to us to date. We will represent you in any hearing or court proceeding.

We’ll send a notary to you at a time and place of your convenience to sign a couple of documents we’ll need to represent you. A few minutes of your time is all that’s required. After that, you’re simply waiting for your check as we work your claim through the recovery process.

The surplus recovery process is challenging and frustrating at times even for the most experienced companies. It’s a bureaucratic maze of rules, regulations and requirements and each county is slightly different in its requirements AND its interpretations of Florida Statute 197.582, the ‘rules’ essentially that govern surplus money and how its handled. We believe an experienced recovery company, that specializes in just ONE thing, tax deed surplus recovery, is a wise and prudent decision.

In very basic, non-contested and non-probate cases it is possible to try and recover surplus on your own. A couple of things to consider. First and probably most importantly, you’ll be fronting the money now to file a claim and be responsible for the costs associated with working that claim through the recovery process.

Second, the ‘Laws of Experience’ usually hold. If you’ve never done something before, you’re zero times good at it. If you've done it 10 times, you’re 100 times better. If you’ve done it 100 times, you’re 1,000 times better. Expertise is exponential. The best analogy we can think of is; you can file your own federal and state taxes each year. But the statistics show that one out of every two taxpayers hire an expert to do it for them. There’s a reason why. Get an expert in your corner.

We’re confident. By the time we contact you, we’ve already researched your surplus information to determine if it’s a viable claim to pursue. Since we’re responsible for all costs associated with working a claim through the recovery process, we wouldn’t be contacting you unless we were very confident of making a successful claim on your behalf.

Our fastest recovery for a client is 12 days from date of submission to check being issued. That’s very unusual. The state of Florida can legally withhold payment for up to one year. Fortunately, that’s as unusual as a 12-day payment. Most claims are a two-to-three-month process, if things go smoothly. We try and set the expectation for our clients with a 3-to-6-month window.

Less than you’d think and certainly less than a law firm that does this kind of work. We work on a contingency fee basis and get a percentage of the surplus funds ONLY if we’re successful in returning your money. All costs to work your claim through the recovery process are paid out of our percentage.