House issues

DEAR MRS MACAULAY,

Twenty-something years ago my father received a house through the National Housing Trust. Since the purchase he has had some relatives living in it. They paid off the mortgage and now they don’t want to leave the house. They said they have given my father a piece of land, but there is no proof of such land. I am really concerned because my father is getting older.

It seems to me that your father’s arrangement for his relatives to occupy the premises and pay the mortgage meant that they could occupy and continue to do so peacefully, as long as they paid the mortgage. This meant and means that their mortgage payments were the consideration to your father for his permitting them to have peaceful and uninterrupted occupation of the said premises. To make it clearer, their monthly mortgage payments were ‘rental’ payments for their occupation, even though they were not paid directly to your father.

When these payments ended with the settlement of the mortgage debt, you father would be entitled to get his property back. It seems from what you said, that your father attempted to either enter into a new arrangement/agreement with them, or sought to obtain possession again of his property, but that they refused to move out. You also say that they then claimed that they had given your father a piece of land in exchange. Yet you have found no evidence of such a piece of land.

It is good that you are seeking to protect your father’s and his immediate family’s interests in his legally owned property. But you must go further. Firstly, help your father to write to these relatives (all of them) pointing out that as there is no longer any mortgage payments to be made, and that they must vacate the premises or meet with him and you to enter into a new arrangement with him. Or better still, you and your father must retain the services of a lawyer to act for him to repossess his property.

The matter would in all likelihood have to go to court for declarations and orders to be made in your father’s favour. You must do this as there is clearly a real danger that these people will go all out to get hold of your father’s property. These kinds of problems arise because people neglect their best interests by not obtaining legal advice and/or services when they are entering into agreements, especially in relation to land matters which have special rules of law.

Your father clearly did not have a written contract with his relatives when he and they agreed that they would occupy the premises in exchange for their payment of the mortgage. But all is not necessarily lost. You need his and your own lawyer to get the full facts (which you have not given to me in your very short letter), and check his title and any other supporting document to properly advise him and act for him as promptly as possible. Time runs in law against an applicant, and as you did not say from when the mortgage was paid up, you must act now and quickly. Spending money for legal fees is worth the protection of your father’s legal interests, do you not agree?

Finally, about the alleged ‘piece of land’ they say they gave your father, who owned the land? Is there a title in the owner’s name? What is the size of the land? Exactly where is it? They cannot give land to him without the transaction of transferring it being in writing as per a survey plan of the alleged parcel of land. The exact size is vital. As you reported, it does not sound true and it cannot in law be done by them with just word of mouth and without evidence in writing of your father’s signed acceptance of it with full details of the whole transaction.

Once again, please go and get a lawyer to do what is necessary for your father to repossess his property so that he can make arrangements to obtain an income from it as he gets older.

Act now so that your father will not lose his property.

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.

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.