2 concerns: Incompetency & Death - Posted by John Merchant
Posted by John Merchant on October 02, 2005 at 15:07:48:
This is just one of the concerns arising from deal with elderly seller.
First is the provable competence of the Seller to sell, i.e. can you prove Seller knows what he’s doing, the extent of his property, the consequences of his selling, etc.?
This is an area where the buyer had better prepare himself for a lawsuit by the kids or heirs of that elderly person later claiming that we’ve taken advantage of Granny and cheated him because he really didn’t know what he was doing.
To prepare against that claim and to bolster our having done an honest deal, and one that Granny surely DID fully understand and comprehend, I like to include Granny’s own lawyer in the deal, or hire a new lawyer for Granny and have that new lawyer look at the deal and counsel Granny on it, so as to have him/her as a later witness to the fairness of the deal.
Where I hire the new lawyer, that lawyer is then reluctant to shoot down the deal as being unfair to Granny as that would be biting the hand that’s feeding him, so this is my preferred route.
Or the Buyer could hire and take along a notary public to and ask questions (as per a list of questions you’ve given the NP to ask) of Granny to make sure G did understand and knew his rights at that time, etc.
On the issue of possible death, one way to eliminate that worry is to have G sign and deliver to escrow his Deed along with his REC (real estate contract), to be delivered to Buyer when all contingies are met, etc.
This way G could die the next day and the purchase/sale would still be continued and closed.