Your Legal Questions: November 12, 2026

All right, time now to answer some of your legal questions, and we turn to Fox 26 senior legal analyst Chris Tritico. Good morning. Good morning. Good to have you here. All right, well, let's start with this first question. The viewer says, I was recently served with a citation for an auto accident that occurred while I was employed at a foundation company. I spoke with the company. I am no longer working for them, and they said that this is on me, and I need to get an attorney to defend myself. When this happened, I reported the accident to Retrieved all the information from All right, so if you were on the job when you had this accident, it's their responsibility to take care of this. Thank you very much for this. You didn't tell me if you were driving your personal vehicle or a company vehicle, and that's going to kind of make a difference here, but it's still the company's responsibility to defend this. And they're the ones that are going to be on the hook for this at the end of the day. If you were driving your personal vehicle, then contact your own insurance company and report it to them and they will get a lawyer and they will handle it. And the other thing you The only thing you can do is file an answer yourself Contact the lawyer, the plaintiff's lawyer, and tell them I was working for this foundation company at the time I was on the job, and they will sue that company. They're not after you. They want the people who can pay, all right? And once you tell them that, they're going to join that company in. You have no love lost for these people who aren't helping you, so let the plaintiff's lawyer know that you were working for that company at the time, and they're responsible for this. Good luck. All right. Well, our next question involves the IRS. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Okay. So a viewer writes, can I report someone to the IRS for purposely failing to file their income tax from 1989 to 1999? I have a letter from his employer and I have all the documentation. Can I report his evasion without having to send all the documentation until I see if they are going to do anything? Wow. All right. You can file, you can report this to the IRS and I don't know that you can do what you want to do by not giving them the information, but yes, you can. There's two ways to do this. You can file a form 3949-A, everything with the IRS is in forms, okay? 3949-A, you can log on to the IRS webpage and fill that out on the web or you can print it and mail it in. That's an anonymous form and with that it'll tell you exactly what you have to give them. If you want to try to get money for the fraud that this person committed, and if there's enough fraud there, then you can get a reward. That has to be signed under oath, and you have to tell them your name. That form is Form 211. Again, you have to do that under oath. You're going to have to give them all the information you have, and you're going to have to give them more information. So that's the two forms you have to file. Either way, one's anonymous, one's not. They're not going to tell you what happens because they're not going to give you updates, but fill out one of those, send it in. That's your answer. Good luck. Well, that's a question I haven't seen. That's right. That's right. And there's no statute of limitations on fraud with the IRS. So even though that was a long time ago, he can still do it. Wow. Interesting. All right. Another one involving taxes. So my dad passed away in May of 2024. Since then, we learned that he owes back taxes of his home and property. Last year, I received a call asking if we are selling our property because it's going up for auction. We received no letters from the county, no warning at all. We paid a big portion and were told that we can start a payment plan. I sent several emails with no response. It happened again. The house is set for auction again with no notice to us. They said we had a court date in May, but we did not know. We are going to pay what they are asking to stop the auction. What can I do about this? We are not receiving any notice at all. If it wasn't for realtors calling, asking if we would sell because of the auction, we would not have known and my parents would have been auctioned. Not your parents, the house. Or their house, their parents' house. Yes, some parents, sometimes people might want their parents auctioned. So what's happening here is the house is still in your parents name and not in the name of the estate or in your name and so you're not getting these notices. So there's two things needs to happen here. You need to, you need to probate this estate and get the name in the, the, the, the, the property needs to be transferred into the name of the estate or in the name of the person who's going to take over this estate. That way you'll start getting these notices, get this done immediately. And then you won't have this problem again, get these taxes settled and get all that transferred over. You won't have this This problem again, get with the county and get that, get all of this. Property transferred over to the lawful owner who owns it now. Then you won't have this problem again. Good luck. Glad you're here to help them get this sorted out. It's just a notice problem. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks so much, Chris. And of course, if you want to send us your legal questions, just head over to Fox26Houston.com. You can find Chris's segments under the Morning News tab. And as always, for specific information and advice, contact an attorney of your choice.