DEAR MRS MACAULAY,

I lost my dad two years ago. He left behind six children, two of us being adults. He died leaving three vehicles and a house. However, after he passed his parents and sisters locked us out of his house. We went to the Administrator General’s office in Kingston, and signed some documents. But thereafter, his sisters sold all three vehicles and somehow rented out the house without our knowledge. I’d like your advice on how that was possible and what can be done.

From your letter, you made no mention of any of your father’s family members giving any reason why they acted the way they did. The only acceptable and legal reasons I can think of, is if they proved to you that they, and not your father, owned the premises and the vehicles, or produced a valid last will and testament from your father naming only them as his beneficiaries. But even in the latter instance, they could not just seize his entire or any part of his estate without producing, reading to you all, and applying for and obtaining probate of such a will. During this process, you the adult children, and on behalf of your minor siblings, could apply to the court and challenge the authenticity of such a will, and/or apply for the minor children who had been maintained by their father to continue to be provided for from his estate until they reach adulthood.

Since they seemed to have just acted without such a grant of probate or proof of ownership, this says to me that they intentionally acted atrociously, dishonestly, and in clear breach of the law.

In fact, once a parent dies and is survived by children and there is no wife/spouse, the estate goes to the surviving children, who would precede any surviving parent(s) of the deceased, and most certainly any siblings of the deceased. There are detailed tables for the distribution of a deceased person’s estate who died ‘intestate’, and since you did not refer to a will, I conclude that your father died ‘intestate’. His estate therefore falls within the provisions of the Intestates’ Estates and Property Charges Act and the Administrator General’s Act.

The existing law makes it clear in the circumstances of your father having died intestate, and his six children having survived him, and no spouse being present; that none of his parents and/or his sisters can precede the rights and entitlements of his children, and as there are minor children, such an estate by law must be administered by the Administrator General (AG), who should obtain Letters of Administration and administer the estate, providing maintenance for the minor children. Only after the youngest becomes 18 years of age and completes their education, can the AG’s office then distribute the residue of the estate equally among all the children. If any of the six children die leaving any child, that child would get their dead parent’s one-sixth share.

I am rather shocked by what you say the sisters and mother have done. They will have to account for every cent obtained from their sales of the vehicles, and also for every cent of rental they have obtained from the premises. They will have to pay over every cent.

I am even more shocked that you say that you reported your father’s death to the Administrator General’s office, but it seems to me that you have not heard from them and that you have not gone back to that office to report what has happened to the real and personal properties of your father’s estate, to which you children are entitled, and especially from which the minor children ought to be maintained.

So what should you do? You, the adults, must report what your father’s sisters have done and ask what the AG’s office has done since you went there and reported your father’s death. If there were some documents outstanding, then the office ought to have contacted you and advised you, and they should have taken up the matter as assiduously as possible. Even now, the AG’s office must act to get the properties of the estate (the house), and all that which have been wrongfully sold. This office has the legal duty to administer estates such as your father’s, and to legally protect the assets of such an estate, most especially for the benefit and interests of your minor siblings. If you all lose your entitlements because of the fault or negligence of the AG’s office, that office would be liable for such a loss.

Now after you go back to the AG’s office, if you are dissatisfied with their answers, you ought to obtain the services of a lawyer to pursue the matter against the AG’s office until you and your siblings obtain satisfaction in the fact that the Administrator General of Jamaica’s office has all your father’s estate property in its care, and is taking steps to collect any proceeds of any sales, plus interest due thereon and owing, and that they are protecting all of your interests. A lawyer working on your behalf ought to succeed to obtain sufficient information from which you can at least from the start, get to understand what has happened and is happening to your father’s estate following the interloping of his parents and your aunts. In my opinion, your lawyer should also ask if claims had also been filed against them for damages for trespass from the date of their entry on the premises, and continuing to the date they hand the same over to the AG’s office.

From what you have said, they acted illegally, dishonestly and without any empathy for the minor children and left them adrift, ignoring all their best interests and their right to proper care and development. On proof of all this, they then must be made to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Please go immediately to the Administrator General’s office and find out what has been done since you reported your father’s death to them. Then you would know whether you need to obtain your own lawyer. Please be proactive throughout this process. Do not let any more time pass. You must act and act now!

Margarette May Macaulay is an attorney-at-law, Supreme Court mediator, notary public, and women’s and children’s rights advocate. Send questions via e-mail to allwoman@jamaicaobserver.com; or write to All Woman, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5. All responses are published. Mrs Macaulay cannot provide personal responses.