Can A Landlord Change The Rent After A Lease Has Been Signed?
Video Summary
Can a landlord change the rent after a lease has been signed? The answer is no, you cannot, because the lease says that you’re going to pay your rent for a certain amount of time and this is what the rate is. It’s a contract between the landlord and the tenant and so the landlord cannot turn around and change the rent in mid-stream. Sometimes, I’m also asked about, by tenants many times, whether or not if the landlord, and sometimes by landlords too, if they sell the property, can they terminate your lease. The answer is no, that whoever purchases property is taking it subject to whatever rights that the tenant has.
If a tenant has a lease, they have a right to occupy the property for whatever the term of the lease is, and if the lease specifies how much rent they’re supposed to pay, as long as they pay that amount of rent, they have a right to remain in the property. Of course, there may be other terms of the lease that they must abide by, but as far as their rent’s concerned, the landlord can’t change the rent that’s set forth in a lease. Now, sometimes you get a lease, that the people have stayed in there for, let’s say a year, and the lease expires. They continue on. They keep paying the same rent. They become a month to month tenant.
Then the question becomes, “Well, can the landlord raise the rent once they become a month to month tenant?” The way that the landlord can do that is they have to send a 15-day notice that they are terminating the month to month tenancy, meaning that they’re going to terminate the tenancy. [In 00:02:09] the same notice or agreement with the tenant, they can say that, “I will continue to lease to you but it’s going to be at a higher rental amount.” That’s how a landlord raises the rent on a tenant by giving him 15 days notice that he’s terminating a month to month tenancy. Hopefully you don’t run into any problems like that.
If you have any questions, give me a call at 727 847 2288.
- Published in Real Estate, Videos
Will You Avoid Probate With A Trust?
Video Summary
Will you avoid probate with a trust? The answer is if it is properly executed and all of your assets are titled in the name of the trustee, then there will not need to be a probate proceeding and therefore you’ll be avoiding probate. If however you do not transfer or title all of the assets in the name of the trustee of the trust, then your assets would then have to be probated, which is usually under a will that says I leave everything to the trustee. That’s called a pour-over will. Then you have to probate those assets to put them into the trust.
The trust then has to be administered. Depending on the complexity of the trust or whether it’s an outright distribution or you hold the assets for a period of time and pay out income or if it’s a special needs trust, you may need to have an attorney assist you as far as the administration of the trust. Some of the things that a successor trustee would need to do would file a notice of trust with the clerk of the court.
Also there are certain tax ramifications and a that a successor trustee, meaning after the person who set up the trust dies, that’s usually a revocable trust, they need to apply for what they call a Federal Identification number so that the taxes would be reported in their fiduciary or as a trustee rather than under their individual Social Security number. They may need some guidance so it won’t have to go through probate. The biggest problem with probate is having to pay the attorneys a fee. You may need to engage the services of an attorney in order to assist you as far as the administration of a trust.
An answer to your question is is if the trust has all the assets of the decedent and the trustee can distribute everything out and there’s no income, then you can avoid probate by setting up a trust. You can also look at various alternatives doing estate planning on how to retitle assets and possibly avoid the necessity of spending quite a bit of money to establish a trust.
If you wish to do some estate planning and try and figure out how to avoid probate the most economical way, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
What Are Some Signs A Loved One May Need A Guardianship?
Video Summary
What are some signs that my loved one may need a guardianship? Well first and foremost, any time you’re thinking about filing a guardianship proceeding, you have to consider whether or not there’s a lesser restrictive alternative. Well what is a lesser restrictive alternative? Well a lesser restrictive alternative in this situation would be a power of attorney. If your loved one has a valid, durable power of attorney that has an agent named, and that agent is acting on their behalf and is not abusing the power of attorney, then most courts are going to find that a guardianship is not necessary because there is already in place a lesser restrictive alternative, which is a power of attorney.
But let’s just say you’re in that situation where your loved one did not execute a power of attorney prior to incapacity. What are some of the signs that you may notice that your loved one may need a guardianship? Well one sign would be spending their resources, such as money, selling their home, doing things that don’t make sense to their financial plan.
Now we can’t stop people from making poor financial decisions, but a great example that I could give you would be if your loved one has decided to invest $30,000, within the last month, in vacuums. Well that’s not really a prudent investment, and beyond not being wise financially there may be something more going on. Possibly your loved one is being manipulated, and may not be making the financial decisions for themselves.
That’s just one example. Another example would be if you’re starting to see that your loved one cannot manage their health, cannot manage their person, and cannot manage things that are necessary to their person and to their well being. Again, if you do not have a valid power of attorney in effect, a lot of the times a guardianship proceeding will be necessary.
Those are just some of the things to look out for to see whether or not your loved one may be a viable candidate for a guardianship proceeding. If you have any other questions regarding a guardianship, please refer to give me a call here at Waller & Mitchell at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Guardianship, Videos
What Type Of Assets Go Through Probate?
Video Summary
What type of assets go through probate?
Assets that are titled in the decedent’s name alone are the assets that go through a probate proceeding. Saying it another way, that if you have – the decedent owns assets, and they have a designated beneficiary, those assets don’t go through probate.
A prime example of that is a life insurance policy where they designate a beneficiary. Then that is controlled by that contract, and the money is paid the designated beneficiary. However, if you have a life insurance policy, you designated a beneficiary, the beneficiary dies before you do, well then that life insurance proceeds would be probated and follow your estate, your will or be probated and go to your designated beneficiaries.
Another example of assets that may be in the decedent’s name that don’t go through probate is if you set up a savings account that says it’s payable on death, or in trust for and you designate to whom you would want that bank account to go to. And even though the asset is in your name alone at your death, you by contract have designated who would receive the asset.
Also they have a similar designation, as far as a brokerage account. That’s called a TOD account, that’s transfer on death. So if you would designate someone to receive it upon your death, then it would not go through probate. However, if you have a brokerage account, savings bonds, any kind of stock that are titled just in the decedent’s name, then those assets would go through probate.
One of the things that I get many questions on is what about the household furniture and furnishings, and crystal, china, silverware, collectables – all of that is untitled personal property. And I cannot remember, and I don’t believe I’ve ever handled an estate wherein we had probated the untitled personal property assets. And that usually the beneficiaries will take care of doing that without going through a probate administration. Also, I just comment on that to my clients whenever we talk about that, that they can prepare a list and designate who they want to receive certain assets or specifically designate that; but the big question is, is the asset there whenever, you know, the decedent passes away, did they give it away beforehand, or did someone come in, another family member come in and remove it before you arrived and you knew you were supposed to get that. It’s very, very difficult to prove what was there and that you are to be the rightful owner. I say that this sort of the U-Haul effect, that whoever gets there first with the U-Haul is the winner, and so hopefully you all have a functional family when it comes to untitled personal property that can be distributed amongst the beneficiaries pursuant to the decedent’s wishes, or having it distributed equitably as far as all of the parties involved. It’s also problematic with untitled personal property, whenever it has sentimental value.
So the assets that have to be probated are whenever you have a titled asset just in the decedent’s name alone. There are some other exceptions, such as automobiles, that can be transferred without going through a probate proceeding. So if you have questions about probate, well give me a call at 727-847-2288.
Is It Important To Have A Will Even If You Have No Assets?
Video Summary
Is it important to have a will if you have few or no assets that you’re aware of?
The answer to the question is is yes, it is important, and that you don’t know what assets you’re going to have when you pass away. You may be the recipient of an inheritance that you didn’t know about. You may be the lucky winner of a lottery, course you have to play to win. But you don’t know when you’re gonna pass away, so therefore you don’t know what assets you may have at that time. And the will gives you an opportunity to designate to whom you wish to receive those assets.
Also as far as owning assets that you may jointly own with someone else, and you anticipate that they’re going to survive you, well if they pre-decease you, well then you need to designate who you would want to receive that particular assets. Also, it’s important to designate who you would like to administer this. Many times, whenever you have family involved, there may be one particular child that can get along with everyone else; or you may decide that you want a complete – someone that’s not a family member to administer the estate to avoid any friction, and that way you can designate whom you would like to administer your estate. So I believe that it is important.
Also, whenever you do your will, there are other documents that will be discussed, such as a living will, a healthcare surrogate, and durable power of attorney, all of which are estate planning documents that we discuss and usually execute in conjunction with your will, which controls the end of life situation, as far as your estate planning.
So if you ‘d like to do a will, give me a call at 727-847-2288.
- Published in Estate Planning, Videos