Senior needs help recovering NHT money

Dear Mrs Macaulay,

I was living in the United States of America for over 30 years. When I came home to Jamaica I saw where the National Housing Trust (NHT) was buying land left to me and my father by my grandfather. I contacted them about it and went and got the title. The title showed that the land was a particular number on one street, but I know it to be another number on the same street. Anyway, the Land Department offered me $400,000 and then paid me $200,000 and told me that I needed to get my father’s death certificate. I have been to the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) but they have no information. My father died in the Eventide Nursing Home fire. They told me they have no information on him. I have been trying to get the balance of $200,000 from the Land Department. The NHT which paid me, told me by way of a letter that my father is deceased. Please see if you can help me with this matter as I am a senior citizen and I need my money. The NHT told me in the letter that I should provide them with copies of documents confirming ownership or authorisation to act on the owner’s behalf. Is this right under the law? The land is a joint tenancy. It has been 11 years and I have still not received the rest of my money because I can’t get the death certificate from any of the departments. Please can you help me get the rest of my money or advise me how to get the death certificate? This has been from 2004.

Let me state what I understand your problem to be from your letter. I understand that you and your father inherited land from your grandfather. You had been living in the United States and when you returned to Jamaica, you discovered that the NHT was purchasing the land. You say you then contacted them and went and got the title. This bit is not clear, as you do not say from whom you “got the title”. You also state that despite the mix-up about the number of the land that appeared on the title, you were offered $400,000 for the land and you were paid $200,000 in advance. Strangely, it was then that you say you were asked to produce your father’s death certificate. You were informed at the Registrar General’s Department that they have no information about your father’s death.

You intimate that because you have not been able to provide the NHT with the death certificate in proof of your father’s death, you have not been paid the balance of the $200,000 still owed to you. You also state that they have asked you to provide documents to confirm your ownership or any authorisation to act on the owner’s behalf, and that the land is held in joint tenancy. You have not said whether the joint tenants are you and your father, or whether the land is still registered in your grandfather’s name and another person.

Let me deal with your question about NHT’s request for documents which would confirm your ownership or authorisation to act. They do need to do so in law, but it seems rather late in the day for them to be asking you for this after they have paid you one-half of the agreed purchase price for the land. They ought to have asked for this before they dealt with and paid you any monies for the land. I cannot understand why they part-paid you and then asked for proof of your entitlement afterwards. They clearly put the cart before the horse. I cannot help but ask myself whether they have been estopped from making their demand before paying you the balance due.

You have not said who now has possession of the title, but I assume that you produced and gave that to the NHT, along with your grandfather’s will and proof of your identity when they part-paid you. Since they seemed to have been in better touch with your father than you were, and they knew of his death, I assume that he had dealt with them about the land before you returned to Jamaica. Did you ask them how and when they knew that he had died? If someone informed them, ask for that person’s name and address.

Since the most important task you need to complete is to obtain and provide them with a certified copy of a death certificate in proof of your father’s death, let me deal with this. As the RGD says they have no record of his death, then you have to find at least two people who can swear in statutory declarations that they knew your father, either in the home or elsewhere, and that he died at such and such a time and place.

You may then be lucky enough to get the information you need to get a statutory declaration done, or it may get you a copy of a burial order – the pink slip.

If you get this slip or the declarations and your own declaration, you can take them back to the RGD for them to: first, do another search with the more specific information you would then have; or second, you can ask them whether the declarations you have obtained are sufficient for them to issue a certificate of the death of your father.

You should also check with the NHT, after you have found and identified at least two people who can swear to the declarations I have suggested of your father’s death, whether they would be satisfied with those as proof of his death. You must also provide them with a certified copy of your birth certificate, your father’s and your grandfather’s, all of which, I hope, will have the fathers’ names and particulars entered thereon. These would prove your lineage without a doubt.

I advise you to go to the RGD first and seek their assistance about the use of statutory declarations in circumstances when no evidence of the registration of a birth or death has been found, or the name of a parent does not appear in the records or appears incorrectly. If their answer is positive, then you can go forth and do what is required. If it is negative, you would then have to apply to the Family Court for declarations that your grandfather was your father’s father and your father was indeed your father and that they are both dead and about when. You will again need at least two witnesses in addition to you yourself, to give evidence that they knew them and that they were related to each other as father and son, and to you as father and grandfather and that they died wherever and whenever.

If you get the necessary declarations from the court, the NHT would accept them once you take them certified copies.

I hope that I have given you some things you can do to resolve this matter without having to engage in a long and expensive court case against the NHT for the balance of your money on the grounds that they are estopped from requiring any further proof from you, since they had part-paid you pursuant to a contract for the sale and purchase of the land. This is not a definitive opinion or advice, because I do not have the full facts from you.

I believe that you should take the course of finding more information about your father and the people who knew him and what happened to him, and who would make statutory declarations for the RGD, and failing this, go to the Family Court for declarations.

Good luck.

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.DISCLAIMER:The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.

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.

DISCLAIMER:

The contents of this article are for informational purposes only and must not be relied upon as an alternative to legal advice from your own attorney.