Re: Landlord collects thousands in fees from tenant's estate

On Mar 6, 2025 at 11:26:16 AM PST, ""Adam H. Kerman"" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

Legislation was introduced in Colorado that's passed one House to end a
practice of a landlord collecting early termination fees following the
death of a tenant.
 
A man's mother, who had dementia, lived in a senior complex. He couldn't
reach her by telephone and went over to the apartment to find that she
had died peacefully in her sleep the night before, January 5, 2024.
 
He received a call from the landlord. It was not a condolense call. The
landlord was calling to inform the son that he was enforcing his rights
to two fees for liquidated damages. $3,200 in early termination fees,
and a $2,000 rent concession fee.
 
The mother, you see, was in breech of contract.
 
Sure enough, there was a clause in the contract that the lease could not
be annulled for any reason. Death was specifically mentioned.

If the guy was going to have to pay the rent anyway, he should have just kept
the apartment empty, to at least make sure the landlord couldn't double-dip
and take rent from him *and* a new tenant at the same time.

Normally, in a landlord-tenant contract, if the tenant leaves, the
landlord is obligated to mitigate damages. He's supposed to show the
apartment, offering it for lease. Now, he may have expenses to charge
the departing tenant but if there's, say, nine months left on the lease,
he's not allowed to attempt to collect that much unpaid rent from the
tenant if he's taken no steps at all to find a replacement tenant.
 
There are certainly debts to collect against an estate as death doesn't
make a debt go away. But an obligation to perform a contract after death
is a new one on me.
 
In this case, I don't see how the rent concession fee is fair because
the landlord is still obligated to seek a new tenant. I can see that a
certain amount of time on the lease would be owed but anything
significantly longer than a month after death would be unreasonable.