Grandma, aunt fighting son over father’s ‘dead lef’

DEAR MRS MACAULAY,

My son’s dad died on June 8, 2021, my son is 13 years old. I would have gone to relevant places and submitted all the documents required regarding his death.

My son had asked the family (aunt and grandmother) for one of two televisions belonging to his dad and they told him yes at first, but then the grandmother told him she did not have any television in her back room so she took one and the aunt took one.

They have denied my son and also his older children — he had adult children — everything belonging to their dad.

He had a bus and since he died the family took the bus and it’s now a war between my son’s grandmother and grandaunt regarding the bus. The grandaunt’s son posted the bus for sale.

My son is 13 years old and is a student and I have to be fully responsible for him. He had a good relationship with his dad and just the cost of counselling for my son was very expensive, while these people have his father’s stuff fighting over. Not even his adult children have access.

Please, I need your help or advice.

Dear Concerned Mother,

I must advise you to go with your son’s father’s death certificate, or the pink burial slip, to the Administrator General’s Office, telephone them, or go on their website and by filling the requisite form, report the date of his death, and provide all the necessary information.

You must fill out this form or the staff at the AG’s office will assist you to do so if you go there in person. All the necessary information regarding the deceased’s particulars and the properties he owned when he died, like his bus, televisions and whatever else, must also be inserted in the form. The name, address and occupation of his wife or spouse (if any) who has survived him, and the names, addresses and dates of the births of ALL his children must also be put on the form. You should ensure that your minor son’s existence is also well understood by them. Then lastly, the name and address of his mother who, as far as entitlement to her deceased son’s estate is concerned, comes well after his children and generally would not be able to have a share at all, with all the children he left behind.

The law requires that when a parent dies leaving minor children, the Administrator General must administer that deceased person’s estate in the interest of the minor children. Any person who fails to report or prevents the report of such deaths of persons leaving minor children survivors to the AG’s office would have acted and is acting unlawfully. I do not know what you mean by saying that “you would have gone to relevant places and submitted all the documents required regarding his death”. Did you go to the Administrator General’s Office and report his death and that his minor child, your child with him, is his youngest child? It seems to me that you did not, because if you had done so they would have also asked you about what property/assets your child’s father had and you would, I am sure, have told them about his televisions, his bus and any other personal or real property he had.

The administrator general’s officers must take control of your son’s deceased father’s estate properties because, firstly, that is what the law says, and they must pay all the expenses due following his death and the legal costs and taxes due for the administering of the estate. Then secondly, they must provide sufficient maintenance for your son to continue his education and living his life as he used to do while his father was alive. They would have to obtain Letters of Administration and take in all the estate properties/assets, including any sums of money in any bank account(s) and any proceeds of his insurance policy, if the beneficiary was his estate and not a named person. The televisions and his bus would have to be sold and the office would hold the money in trust, investing it as it deems best, and arrange with you how they would provide for your son, for his educational, medical and other expenses for the necessities of his life until he is 18 years old. It is then, if there is any money left, that the AG’s office will be able to share what is left between him and the other adult children.

So dear mother, you must now understand that your son’s grandmother and aunt had no right to even touch or interfere with any of the deceased’s possessions, let alone take the televisions as they did. They also had no right to decide who could take any of his possessions and who could not have anything. They have stolen from a deceased’s estate and have interloped and interfered in the legal business of the Administrator General of Jamaica. They have broken the law and they could be not only be charged but could also legally be forced to deliver the estate properties to the AG. This is also true of those who took the bus, and if the grandaunt does sell the bus she would have to pay over all the money to the AG; and if she sold it for less than it is worth, she can be made to also pay the balance to make up its true value. What the grandmother, aunt and any others of the deceased’s family did in interfering and illegally taking them is disgusting and criminal, especially depriving a young boy who lost his father of his just and legal entitlements.

So what should you do? You most go straight to the Administrator General’s Office and report your son’s father’s death, even if you do not have what you submitted wherever anymore. You will be advised and assisted and action will be taken to try and secure the properties — and if not, steps will be taken to recoup from those who stole the deceased’s estate properties. You have time to do the report. It is not even a year since that death on the 8th of June last year. But please, do not waste and further time and tell them of the aunt’s plan to sell the bus. Urgent action is necessary, and whoever took possession and control of the bus must also be asked to account for and pay over any income made from its use, or any income lost because it was taken. This cannot happen if you do not go and make the report of the death and give the office the necessary information. You owe it to your son, to yourself, and to truth and justice to do the right thing and make these greedy and dishonest persons answer for their actions. All the very best to you and your son.

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.