Happened when my uncle died of cancer, as he had around $1500 racked up on a credit card for the remodeling he was doing to his home prior to his diagnosis. When he passed, they just wiped the debt and didn't go after his family.

Spent some time in Florida during the boom years .Things got way out of hand as far as the tenants go including outrageous rates .

A LARGE chunk of south Florida apartment rentals are actually old hotel rooms for starters .You are renting with a formal apartment rental lease an old efficiency or hotel room .The building is frequently under a transient license meaning it is meant for vacationers or seasonal people .Old hotels were never wired or plumbed for year round daily use .

There's a whole list of reasons why these conditions and landlords exist in Florida including the boom which allowed many smalltime landlords to rent year round to construction workers at MUCH higher rates than they would've gotten before the boom .The boom also made alot of voluntary and involuntary landlords ie amateurville .

Until the boom if you didn't mind lower pay and a low key lifestyle you could rent from these old hotels cheap AND the landlords would go out of their way to help .They prided themselves on their hospitality because that's what south Florida was once : a tourist area .

The boom brought greed and alot of don't give a heck tenants who did things like leave the A/C on all day & rack an electric bill ,trashed the rooms ,skipped rent etc .The landlords copped an attitude after seeing the boom with greed and harsh over compensating tactics/attitude on legit renters .

The realtors and their lobbyists got so greedy and powerful that they had legislation that would have retroactively back dated the amount of time they could have sued OLD long gone tenants for damages-10 years old .It was still pending with I left(a whole topic)-ain't much beyond deposit $ in OLD hotel rooms though .

Point being that Florida-ground zero for the boom gave birth to the absurdity of anything dealing with real estate including landlords like this .

only in Florida and California would you have idiots that do something like this.

Their slogan should be the Lack of Common sense state

Wait, isn't this covered under the 'Act of God' clause?
Not that I belive in gods, but still, if an isurance comapny can get out of paying me for stuff due to an 'Act of God', then one should be able to avoid paying rent once you leave the apartment and make it availble for the landlord to lease it.

The landlord does have a right to collect on the contract. If there is an estate what is the problem?Just pay it, i am sure you have more important things to do with your time.

Yes, it's evil, but I want to see him go down. What a jerk.

@MyPetFly: Yes. and Yes.

Landlords cannot 'double dip': collect two rents for the same apartment, regardless of the circumstance.

The estate would be entitled to return of the full damage deposit except for damages to the unit beyond ordinary wear and tear. "Reasonable costs for rehabbing the unit" is not a legal basis for witholding a damage deposit.

The guy is dead. Rent his apartment out to someone else and minimize your losses. The former renters losses are much greater in this situation. (HE's DEAD)

I have the answer:

If a lease contains a clause binding the "heirs, successors, and assigns" of the lease, then the lease continues after the death of the tenant unless cancelled by the lessor and the the heirs. Otherwise, it is a personal contract that expires at death.

- Landlords Rights & Duties, 10th Ed, Mark Wanda, Attorney at Law

If the lease did contain said clause the landlord would be entitled to collect the rent owed for the remainder of the lease. The landlord is arguing that he is entitled to the rent and damage deposit due to a general abandonment clause. A general legal principle is that where the law is specific, e.g.:"heirs, successors, and assigns" it always trumps the general, e.g.: "abandonment."

So, I would guess that the landlord has royally screwed themselves in this case. I would be surprised if their case survived summary judgment on appeal.

Also, this whole case is peculiar to Florida law. Where I live, Minnesota, state law provides a clear set of rules for ending a residential lease when a tenant dies, regardless of the remaining term of the lease. I think the most the estate could be held liable for would be 60 days, providing proper notice. Likewise, a clause that would hold the estate liable for the full lease term would be unconscionable, i.e.: not enforceable in court even if you signed it.

After a persons death, his or her estate becomes responsible for the terms of the contract.

I am reminded of this piece by Rowan Atkinson:

A lease contract is an agreement to pay a set amount for a certain period of time in exchange for the right to occupy the property. If it had been paid up front the lessor could likely refuse to return the money but they would have to allow the beneficiary of the estate to occupy the property themselves. Generally the best way to get out of a rental agreement is to personally find a suitable replacement tenant who can pay, thereby ensuring the lessor loses no money. It's still at their discretion whether they will allow that though, and some lessors wont as there are other costs involved such as credit checks.

You were right though, not Nerys, the contract continues after death just as debt does, so the court was being compassionate in siding with the family. However, the landlord was being greedy by retaining the security deposit even if the lease specified that "abandonment" of property forfeited that money. The family cleaned the unit, that should have been enough for the grinch.

@failurate: Reading comprehension = fail. Doh.

@verucalise: Your example doesn't fit your point. The lender doesn't absolve the dead person from contract responsiblities, they repo the car to complete the contract/repayment of the loan.

SO yes the landlord should have chalk this up as a revenue loss on his taxes.

The problem with laws is that Judges do not have to follow them, they can be interpritated. So in this type of senario the judge rules in the defendants behaef, however the appeals board may not.

We shall see.

Any landlord this sticky to the lease will nail your balls to the wall when you leave.

"Chipped paint - Lease permits entire painting of unit, $2,000"
"Scuffed countertops - Ditto, $10,000 replacement of entire kitchen so new kitchen matches old appliances"
"Nail holes - $1,000 to replace all drywall in unit"

etc, etc.

I like to rent the ghetto places. Means nobody cares unless the damage is ridiculous (eg: fists through walls). In the last place we screwed about a dozen different things to the wall. All I did was patch up the holes and slap a bit of (unfortunately, badly matched) paint on the walls. Nobody cared because I didn't steal the handles off the cabinets (seroiusly!) and TP rollers, along with replacing all the light bulbs with saved up burnt out ones like the guy before us did.

So a lease therefore isn't considered debt. What about if the guy did have say a 2 year lease? Does that disappear if he still had 6 months left? What if he paid up front, can the family get the money back?

Any contract that persists after death to create a "debt" is insane. A contract requires two parties.

when you die you NO LONGER EXIST so there is no contract since there is no longer 2 parties.

Well, why not charge him outrageously? I mean, my niece's apartment complex is charging her $3K and keeping her security deposit because she HAS to move to Dallas because she's on the lung transplant list. She gave notice and moved her stuff out, but was then told she had abandoned the property and they wanted all this money, including the final two months rent on the lease. It's a military town and they make exceptions for military leasee's, but they have no compassion for her. We're thinking of putting some junk furniture in there and forcing them to wait to rent out the apartment. I'm not sure, but I heard they have a waiting list for move-ins.

It isn't like she is doing this because she WANTS to, she has 17% lung function, it's a necessity. Get some humanity, people. And, no, she couldn't stay there while on the list, she has to be within a certain distance from the hospital, and where she lived was several hundred miles outside that.

@pmr12002: You're like one a them there CSI people that's on the TV!

Further, it doesn't appear that the contract covered death specifically so a gray area exists.

Does death terminate the contract or does death fall under the abandonment clause of his contract?

Based on the callous nature of the landlord, the judges are going probably to find in favor of the plaintiffs since the landlord had plenty of time to discuss the repayment when they were notified and gave the plaintiffs a walk through of the apartment.

Unless we see a contract though we don't really know what the "Letter of the contract" is. And in cases like this: Letter of contract < public image.

Further, I'm not a contract lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that the ability of one half of a contract to follow through on the "letter of the contract" depends a lot on the type of contract and what the contract letter actually says.

That said, without seeing a copy of the contract it will be hard to say if the contract deals with the death of a tenant specifically. I'm guessing it doesn't based on the way that it's been handled. This probably creates an excessive amount of gray area for legal people to argue over.

Perhaps he was a miser.

Perhaps I should have looked up the details on 'Estate Tax' :D

I guess I don't see what the issue is. Your estate owes any outstanding debts when you die. If you have a contract, it's still in effect. Emotion has nothing to do with it.

I don't know why people are blaming the landlord here. He is not going after the family's money, it is going after the deceased money, which the deceased would have had to pay the landlord had he lived, regardless.

I understand that the family is grieving, and having to go through a long drawn out court procedure over this is a terrible thing, but really, they are fighting to keep money that wasn't really their's in the first place.

What if he died quietly and "used" the apartment for 60 days afetr his death? I tend to think the landlord would have a bigger problem with that.

@balthisar: I know that you're just stating what you observe to be "How this works" in the USA. That doesn't make it fair to the rentee, which is what this site is about.

But your statement "why shouldn't he be entitled to the rent for the unrented remaining portion of the lease", asks a question that I feel that I should answer. It is because the person is dead. He does not live there anymore. I feel that circumstances outside one's control should not punish the rentee in these situations, and The landlord should have been prepared for such a occurance. Heck, even cellphone providers let you out of your contract when you die.

@hypochondriac: They must not have jokes where you're from.

Given that I didn't watch the interview and don't know whether the landlord did use his best abilities to re-rent the apartment, why shouldn't he be entitled to the rent for the unrented remaining portion of the lease? It's the estate that's paying this. You know, they guy's own money that he left when he died. Insurance isn't estate; it's not like the survivors have to pay it out of life insurance proceeds.

We all know that the deceased's debts are still owed by the estate (the leftover money, not the insurance proceeds). Credit cards, utility bills, and mortgages don't just disappear because you die. They have to be settled to the extent that the estate is capable of paying. Again, if there's not enough left over, the heirs don't have to use their own money, and they don't have to use insurance proceeds.

That's a general observation about how this works in the USA. If there's something in the video I didn't catch, please set my otherwise logical thinking straight.

@muchenik: The sad thing is this dude is no doubt going to jack up rent on all the other tenants to cover the court losses incurred by this act of greed.

I love how there is a hearse in the background when the landlord is talking on camera.

Makes me wonder, was he at a funeral? THE funeral? Did the producers bring it in for artistic-alismness? Is it just a coincidence? Are more people at that apartment complex dying? Is there a conspiracy? hmmmm...

Besides, it would've been easier to write it off as a $2000 operating loss on his taxes than to file a lawsuit against the estate and have the judgment tied up this long. I mean, if he *really* needed the money to stay afloat.

If he was so concerned about getting his money after the death of one of his tenants, then he should have his tenants sign a seperate sheet of paper laying out the details of what gets charged after they pass way. Anything beyond 2 months seems extreme to charge for. If someone signed that contract, then it's binding.

I believe most people would be offended by this, so he believed a basic binding contract would cover him.

As for the people who say "Dying doesn't release the dead of contractual obligations" sometimes, it does. If you die, your car gets reposessed - therefore you no longer OWE PAYMENTS ON IT, you gave back the property. (only when the repo'ed car still has money owed on it after the repo, does the estate pay -- but I'm not an expert, that's what I always thought.) Such as this man who passed away gave back the apartment for renting purposes. You probably have to prove without a doubt clauses in the lease and damages resulting in the man's death, and he was unable to do so.

This man is quite cocky to believe an appeal will save him. The poor family.

i really don't think the "needs money to stay afloat" argument holds water in this case. so what if the apartment was vacant for a few months. can you say "tax write-off"?

@blockbustarhymes: Yeah, because dying unexpectedly is exactly like skipping town, functionally speaking. And we all know that all things being equal, there's no reason not to step outside the letter of the law, or the letter of the lease in this case. Or not.

The guy may be within his right to do this. Apparently the courts didn't agree though, and neither do we. And it's not always about doing something just because you can.

The interesting part is that these were expenses that had yet to be incurred but were still contractual.

I'm not defending the landlord's actions.

Your superstitious? Does it really make a difference if someone died in an apartment your planning on renting? I might be a bit worried is someone was murdered. That can suggest a bad neighborhood or something.

But you're absolutely right, no more surprise at scummy landlord than a dishonest car dealer.

I hope the court upholds the original judgment.

This landlord is an idiot. He's going to lose so much more money than he had before, not to mention get himself vilified in the press. And while some leases have provisions that allow for the lease to survive the tenant, some don't -- and as this landlord lost at trial, I've got to guess that this lease did not. How stupid do you have to be to press something like this, being cruel to a bereaved family, when you don't have a legal leg to stand on?

I'm not defending this guy, but can you imagine if apartments in Ft. Lauderdale DIDN'T go after the estate for rent? They'd all be out of business.

There's a reason Florida is called "God's Waiting Room"

Again, I'm not saying the guy is doing good. Not only does it seem like he didn't explain it to the family at the time, it's obviously bad publicity to do this.

If you're him, what if you needed that 900/month to stay afloat? If you're worried about that much money, you probably don't give a crap about what a bunch of whiners on the internet think about you. Something tells me people aren't looking for this place on the internet anyways.

I would have thought he would have stopped sooner.

and why would you even bother to fight this over 2000 dollars?

Most if not all landlords are scumbags who is really surprised by this?

"The family's lawyer argue that dying in your apartment can't be considered abandonment"

It is a very sad thing about the people in country when this statement must be taken to court and proven.

I can't believe that guy was willing to be interviewed on camera. He's going to find himself in a world of hurt. The internet and media is not very forgiving.