Sister is living rent free in inherited property. Should she pay rent to other sibling? My father died in Jan 2015. My sister moved in with my mother Feb. 2015 to care for her. In April, 2015 my sister sold her home. She was now mortgage free. The following month, my mother added my sister on to the Title of her home, which she owned free and clear. Even though the will states that we have equal share of all assets, I live 3000 miles away so my mom thought it made the most sense to just add my sister on. My mom died in Oct 2015. My sister still lives there, mortgage-free and rent-free, and has no immediate plans to move out. I'm ashamed to admit this, but until recently, it had never even occurred to me how much she has been benefiting financially all this time and how much I have been losing. For 2 years, she has not had to pay rent or a mortgage payment. I believe she should be paying me an amount every month that is half of the fair market rent, which is $1950. And since she should have been paying that to me for the last 2 years, that total should be deducted from her share of the proceeds when the house is sold. I need to know what the law says about this before I talk to her.
These types of situations can, do and will get very messy and bitter fast. The key question here is actually two basic areas: What’s the legal situation now in terms of what you can actually claim etc? For this you need a lawyer familiar with the local laws. Second, and much more important, is how much you value your relationship with your sister. These types of situations can and do irreparably break families, and you need to think very hard about this element of the situation regardless of what your legal rights are. Personally I would err towards probing gently into what she thinks is fair/your mother intended etc and go from there, with the emphasis on extreme caution. Money can always be replaced. Families can’t.
The official website of the french administration gives details under which conditions a landlord can end a lease in France. As a general rule, the landlord cannot end a lease unless meeting certain conditions. The landlord has to send a letter to all of the tenant (all of them if multiple) named on the lease, and the spouse of the tenant even if not named on the lease. The letter has to be sent at least 6 month before the end of the lease if the residence isn't furnished, or 3 months if the residence is furnished. The letter must contain the reason for the ending of the lease. There are 3 causes the landlord may use to end the lease: The landlord plans to make the residence the primary residence of them, their spouse / partner (of at least 1 year) / PACS partner, or an ascendant or descendant of the landlord or their spouse. The landlord plans to sell the residence. In this case, the tenant has the priority to buy the residence if they wish. If the tenant take the offer, the landlord is obliged to accept the offer. The landlord can also sell the residence with the lease, in which case the lease is transfered to the buyer. Under legitimate and serious cause, including but not limited to not paying rent / regularly paying the rent late, causing trouble to the neighborhood, subleasing the residence... If the tenant contests the cause, the landlord will have to justify to a judge the reason the cause of termination. In this case, the landlord can have ground to end the lease before its end date. Otherwise, the landlord cannot end the lease, and the lease is automatically renewed at the end date without the need of explicit communication. A tenant can be protected if they fall under certain conditions. I don't find anything protecting people with a child, but if the tenant is older than 65yo / taking care of someone older than 65yo and the tenant earns an income lower than a certain limit a given year Then the tenant can be protected from these causes, unless the landlord is also older than 65 or earns an income lower than the same limit as the tenant or offers to help relocate the tenant to another residence close to the first residence which also accomodates to the need of the tenant. Note that, if the ex-tenant found that the cause given by the landlord was fraudulent (for example saying they'll use it as a primary residence but lease it to another tenant), then the tenant can bring the case to court and get indemnized as indicated here.
Ultimately yes, this can and does happen, but there are a few steps necessary before the bailiffs come to your door. In times gone by, the common law recognized a right to &quot;distrain for rent&quot;, meaning that a landlord could come round to the tenant and seize some property as security (up to the value of the rent owed). If the rent is not then paid within a certain time, the goods could be sold. Various additional provisions of law covered the circumstances around forcing entry, breaking open locked cupboards, and searching off the premises for goods which the tenant had concealed. There were also special-case rules about what could be seized, such as a statute of the seventeenth century saying (among other things) that landlords could not harvest growing crops, but could take already-cut sheaves. Subsequent reforms for the protection of tenants have made it so that landlords cannot do this at their whim. They first have to go to the County Court for a judgement that there is an unpaid debt. (In fact, this and subsequent steps can happen with any debt.) On that basis, they can apply for a &quot;warrant of control&quot;, under which an &quot;enforcement officer&quot;, commonly called a bailiff, will take charge of collecting the money owed. There are quite a few steps and rules here, but the basic position is the same in terms of being able to take your stuff. And it is not the landlord walking around making those decisions, but a court-appointed officer. The previous common-law &quot;distress&quot; process is now totally abolished, for most tenants by the Housing Act 1988, and for everybody in 2014, because of the Tribunals, Courts and Enforcement Act 2007 section 71, which simply states The common law right to distrain for arrears of rent is abolished. Commercial property has its own legal regime since that Act, but previously functioned in the same way. So landlords can no longer seize your property on their own, but they can go through a few hoops and ask a court to do it. They also do not get to keep the specific property, but just get the money. As mentioned above, this is the general avenue for what happens when a court orders you to pay money, and you don't do it. The High Court has its own enforcement officers who are able to deal with larger amounts of money, as well as enforcing evictions. In Scotland, the same basic pattern applies but different words are used, and some of the detailed rules are different. &quot;Attachment&quot; is when a sheriff officer (= a bailiff) comes round to value your possessions and auction them off if you don't pay. There is also &quot;arrestment&quot; which is taking money out of your bank account.
As Polygnome points out in the comments, the first step is to determine who owns the original copyright on your mother's work now. This will be her heirs. If you are the sole heir then no problem. If the copyright was explicitly left to you in her will, also no problem. If there are multiple heirs and no explicit assignment of the copyright, then problem. The copyright will probably be considered part of the chattels of the estate (i.e. everything except real estate). If those are allocated fractionally (e.g. half each to two siblings) then the copyright probably followed that principle, unless you have already come to some agreement about it. If you are on good terms with the siblings then the best bet is to just make a deal for their part of the copyright. You could just ask them to sign it over to you, or you could cut them in for a percentage of future royalties. That makes the situation 100% clear, and any publisher is going to require 100% clarity before they consider offering a contract. Once you have the whole copyright you can go ahead and register. I've looked through the registration process and it doesn't actually ask about derivative works. What it wants to know is whether you own the copyright, and who were the authors (including works for hire). So just fill it in on that basis.
The thing I was trying to zero in on was the work/refresh/renovation that needs to be done between tenants, and if they landlord can expect to do it while Tenant A is still paying (up to the date of the 'lease change'), but expecting that Tenant A has vacated before that date, or allows the work to be done while they are still occupying? The first tenant is not required to relinquish possession of the premises while the first lease is in force. The landlord's right of access to the apartment remains unchanged from those specified in the lease and in state landlord-tenant law. So basically the landlord has to wait until the first tenant leaves before doing most of the work. If the first tenant relinquishes possession of the premises before the end of the lease period, the landlord can keep charging rent until the premises has been re-let to a new tenant. But if the landlord has agreed to stop charging rent when the first tenant moves out, the landlord may be bound by that agreement. If the landlord has signed a second lease with a new tenant beginning immediately after the first tenant's mutually agreed early move-out date, then the landlord basically has no time available to fix up the apartment except with the consent of one tenant or the other.
Insurance doesn't work the way you think it does Insurance indemnifies Bob from any liability he has towards Mary up to the value of the insurance. So, if a court finds that Bob must pay Mary $200k then Bob must pay Mary $200k. Bob can then turn to his insurer to indemnify him and, under the terms of the policy, they will pay out $100k for personal liability leaving Bob to find the other $100k wherever he can. The insurance company would not be a party to the litigation (although it would handle the defence on behalf of the insured) so a court cannot order it to do anything. Further there are many, many cases where the insured is found liable for something which the policy (allegedly) doesn’t cover - this often leads to litigation between the insured and the insurer. In parallel, the policy will cover the property damage in accordance with its terms. Assuming the house is adequately insured then the insurer will pay for the demolition, design &amp; reconstruction. It is possible that by agreement or at the insurer's discretion that the insurance can cut Bob a check and leave him to do what he likes with the money: rebuild the home, go on a holiday, or pay a debt he might owe to someone. If the house is not adequately insured then Bob is a co-insurer and the cost of rebuilding is split. For example, if the cost of rebuilding is actually $150k and the total damage amounts to $90k then the insurer will pay $60k and Bob will have to pay the remaining $30k. Co-insurance terms usually have an error factor built in.
If you lived in a community property state, that would create responsibility for your late wife's debts (but Kansas is not one). If you signed a financial responsibility agreement you would be liable (but I assumed you did not). No matter what, her estate is liable, and that could eventually affect you (her debts must be paid first). However, there is one last criterion, the "doctrine of necessaries". This ruling notes Kansas recognizes the doctrine of necessaries, under which a spouse can be held liable when the other spouse obtains necessary items, like food or medical care, on credit. See also St. Francis Regional Med. Center, Inc. v. Bowles for support that the doctrine survives in Kansas.
Landlord-tenant laws are state-specific, and given the number of states it's impractical to scan all of the laws, but based on a reading of a handful of such laws I doubt that there is any law requiring landlords to pay the oil for a rented house. (The matter would be different if there was a multi-unit building with no individual control over temperature, thus pooled fuel usage). It's not clear to me what you assumed the agreement means, where it says "N/A". Perhaps you believed at the time that the place had a different heating system, and you relied on that assumption. In that case, you might be able to go to court and have the contract voided, and you could pick another place to live. If the "options" are specified so that some things are assigned to tenant, some to landlord, and some are N/A, that would especially lead to the reasonable belief that there was no oil heat in the house. But if the only indications were "landlord" versus "n/a", then you could interpret "n/a" as meaning "not the responsibility of the landlord". Analogously, if the agreement only lists "tenant" and "n/a" then a reasonable interpretation would be that this means "the tenant pays" versus "the tenant does not pay". This reasoning would also have to survive the alternative interpretation that the tenant pays for everything, except that n/a means "there isn't one of these". In other words, the meaning of the term might be determinable from the overall context of what's in the agreement. Since the house does not come with a full tank (as with car rentals), the question of what to do with the residual oil at the end of the lease should also be specified. Unlike gas or electric, you're not just paying for actual consumption, you're paying for potential consumption, and you would have an interest in the remaining half-tank at the end of the lease. You could just walk away from that investment (pumping it out and taking it with you could be illegal, since the stuff is kind of a contaminant), or you could have an agreement where the landlord buys the oil back from you, but that should be specified in the agreement (and I assume it isn't). This kind of consideration could support a claim that you reasonably believed that there was no oil system (if there were, there would be some term relating to your interest in the residual oil), or even a belief that the landlord would pay the cost of the oil (since he ultimately gets the remaining oil at the end of the lease). You attorney (hint) should advise you how to approach this.