Brother and Sister both own house. Sister moved out, should brother buy her half? This is in Georgia, USA So a father bought a house, all paid for, then transferred it to his son and daughter, taking his name off completely. They all three lived in house. The sister gets married and moves out of state. Few years later, the father dies. The brother is still living there. The question is, since she is still technically half owner, and the brother has no intentions of moving out, shouldn't he pay the sister something? Can he be sued if he refuses?
The brother is under no obligation to buy, the sister is under no obligation to sell. As co-owners they each enjoy the right to use the property; that the sister chooses not to does not change the brother's right. If the property is owned as tenants in common (the most likely arrangement), the sister can sell or lease her share to whoever she likes without the brother's consent. She could even extend an invitation to an outlaw motor cycle gang to be house guests. If it is a joint tenancy, there is no sister's "share"; the siblings own the whole property as an indivisible whole. In that case both must agree to any dealings.
That is the case in the state of Washington, for example. All property acquired during a marriage is considered community property. This can make things complicated since there are state-specific rules that can arise in case of a divorce (Enovsys LLC v. Nextel Communications, Inc: the couple declared no community property at the time of the divorce, meaning the wife who was not a party in in infringement case, had no standing – and therefore the infringement suit could procede). This page goes into details. There are 9 US states with community property regimes: it is also the law for Sweden, Germany, France and Italy. In the US, permission from one author is sufficient to constitute &quot;having permission&quot; w.r.t. copyright: an owner of the copyright can license the work, and you do not have to get permission from all owners. This does not invalidate an open source license: spouse 1 can grant such a license even if spouse 2 refuses to grant such a license. Rodrigue v. Rodrigue, 218 F.3d 432 partially answers the question in Louisiana specifically w.r.t. copyright. A lower court held that the state-specific quirk of giving a non-author an equal interest in copyrighted IP must be swept away in the interest of uniformity of federal law. The lower court indeed rejected an argument based on 17 USC 301 which declares federal law to be superior to legal or equitable rights that are equivalent to that set out in Title 17: but community property law is not equivalent to Title 17, it's much broader. The higher courts reasoning is a tall wall of words which boils down the their conclusion that &quot;we disagree with the district court only to the extent that it held the conflict between Louisiana community property law and federal copyright law irreconcilable absent congressional intercession&quot;, and having found a way that didn't involve Congress, they declared the work-creator to be the sole owner of the IP created during the marriage. See also the myriad citations contained therein. What this case in particular shows is that the specifics of the states community property laws will have an effect on how a courts would rule on such an IP question.
In the US it's very simple: How does the party that makes the lawsuit get the money in this scenario? They don't. Winning a lawsuit against a person is a legal confirmation that they really do owe you the money. It also gives you the ability to do certain things to try to collect: you could seize their assets or garnish their wages. If they don't have any assets or any income then you are out of luck. You can't take what doesn't exist. As the saying goes, "you can't squeeze blood from a turnip". A bit of legal jargon sometimes used here is to say that such a defendant is judgment proof. Even if you win a lawsuit against them, it won't do you any good, because they just don't have any money. If the person cannot pay it off, does it transfer over to their relatives? No. People are not responsible for the debts of their relatives.
He gets exactly what you give him. If you think the home is worth $225,000 then you should offer him to buy the house for $225,000, and that's it. There is no reason why would accept a lower purchase price of $150,000, there is absolutely no reason to deduct $50,000 rent from the purchase price, because that $50,000 is rent for living there, and there is no reason for anyone other than him to pay the $10,000 for changes that he wanted. Alternatively, you can put the house on the market for $225,000, and if it is sold, your daughter and boyfriend can find somewhere else to live. On further thought, and reading the comment: This boyfriend seems to be quite the sleaze bag. So if you gave in to his demand, and sold him the house for less than half what it's worth, you shouldn't be surprised if he sold it for $225,000, moved away with his new girlfriend who is not your daughter, and left your daughter homeless.
Two people can have an equal interest in real property without being married, and being incarcerated doesn't affect a person's property rights. What matters is that now your ex-wife has a legal interest in the property. As a separate issue, she presumably also has a legal obligation w.r.t. the mortgage (otherwise the quitclaim deed makes no sense). The easiest solution is for the other party to voluntarily transfer their interest in the property to you via a quitclaim deed. A difficult solution is to use the judicial process to remove a person from the title. This could be done if there was fraud involved in the property transfer process, for example if the quitclaim deed was forged (presumably not the case here). You might sue to correct an error which doesn't reflect the terms of the transaction, via a reformation action, but that doesn't seem to be the case (a party not understanding the consequences of transferring an interest isn't an error in the relevant sense). You need to hire an attorney to solve the problem (he will look at all of the documentation relevant for your case for a possible solution).
If you buy a house, you can generally rent out a room in the house, unless in that jurisdiction there is some law against renting rooms in houses (that's actually a condition in my neighborhood, one widely ignored). If it's legal to rent (lease) a room, it is generally legal to sub-lease that room – as long as that's allowed under the original lease contract. I have never heard of a jurisdiction that has a blanket prohibition against subleases. So as far as the actual question goes, the answer is, "yes". The links are about something a different, namely rent control law in San Francisco, and the question of whether a tenant can be evicted from a rent-controlled unit because the owner wants to move in to the unit. Owner move-in eviction requires a specific procedure for giving notice, and the links are about these requirements. Conceivably, though, the question could be whether a person can buy a house that is being rented out, do a proper owner move-in eviction, and then lease a spare room. The SF rent laws require a good faith intent to move in and use as the primary residence for 3 years, and nothing prohibit subsequently leasing a room. Those laws pertain to evictions, not re-rentals. (It should be noted that once eviction under section 37.9(a)(8) has been carried out on a unit in a building, no other unit in the building can ever be so recovered. That could mean that the room in the house could never again be recovered, if it is considered to be a separate "unit" from the "unit" that is the whole house).
Close family members can stay as long as the tenant wants The tenant is entitled to "quiet enjoyment" of the property which includes living with their close relatives - spouse, de facto and children would all qualify; parents and siblings might as well. It doesn't matter if these people are children or adults. You cannot contract out of this as you are not allowed to discriminate in housing based on family situation. The tenant is also entitled to have non-relative house guests stay for as long as is reasonable. A month or so would be reasonable; longer than that and it starts to look like a sub-lease for which they would need your permission. There is generally a limit under texas law of 3 adults per bedroom but that doesn't seem to be an issue here. I also can't see where having a non-resident's mail delivered to the property is something you have a say about. I'd be very careful if I were you because it seems like you are on the wrong side of the law here.
My friend should have taken his property with him, but presumably the host can't just keep it, especially after reaching out to them? Correct. However, the host does not have to do anything to facilitate its return i.e. they don’t have to post it to you. So long as they keep it for your friend to collect and don’t appropriate it for their own use, they are not breaking the law. If they do appropriate it, that is called theft or its tort equivalent, conversion. As my contract was with Airbnb and the host works from them, is there any responsibility on their part, e.g. Could I hypothetically open a small claims case against them? Or would any small claims case be directly against the host themselves? This is not true. You and the host each have a contract with Airbnb for the use of the platform. The contract for the accommodation is between you two and doesn’t involve Airbnb at all. In any event, there is no contractural issue here.