A collections agency, North American Recovery, eventually sued her for payment of the bill, which by 1996 had escalated to more than $950, a result, Ramos said, of legal fees and other costs associated with collecting payment on the original bill.
But Ramos said she was never notified of the lawsuit and therefore didn't contest it.
With no legal defense, a judge ruled in favor of North American Recovery and ordered the local sheriff's department to sell off Ramos's property to satisfy the debt.
According to a 10-page published decision by the Utah Court of Appeals, the judge ordered the sheriff "to collect the judgment, with costs, interest and fees, and to sell enough of defendant's non-exempt real property to satisfy" the amount due.
Keith Meade, a Utah lawyer who focuses on real estate matters, said that this type of judgment typically allows some leeway for just a portion of the defendant's property to be sold off to satisfy the debt owed, which in this case was far smaller than the value of the home. But because the real estate at stake was Ramos's home, which by law is considered "indivisible," the title to the entire property was sold at auction.
Ramos's home was sold in 1996 to Jarmaccc Properties, a Utah company, for $1,550, according to the court documents.
Under the terms of such a sale, a property's buyer -- in this case, Jarmaccc -- buys the title to the home and the right to take over the mortgage payments. But Jarmaccc never did that because Ramos, who said she was never given notice of the sale, said she continued making the monthly mortgage payments herself.
"I continued to pay my mortgage," she said. "I didn't know the house was sold."
She was effectively paying off the note on a home she no longer owned. And for various reasons, she has continued to make payments in the 12 years since, allowing Jarmaccc the chance to eventually keep the home for just the $1,550 it paid at the sheriff's auction.
Ramos estimated that she has paid more than $50,000 toward the principal loan plus interest, the bulk of which came after that 1996 sheriff's sale.
Ramos said she didn't even learn about the sale until 1998, when Salt Lake City denied her application for a loan to do renovations on her home.
"They told me, 'You don't even own the house,'" she said. "I was dumbfounded that somebody else had the title."
But according to the court documents, a deputy sheriff signed a 1996 certificate stating that there was "due and legal notice" that the property would be sold.
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