I lived with my parents since 2015, not because I was homeless (I have a home) but I thought it was the thing to do when my dad's Alzheimer's started getting worse. I left my home, my husband and our son at our house and I went to live with my parents. My dad passed in 2018 and I was not going to leave my mom alone at that point. My mom passed in January 2023 at which point I was going to return home. Unfortunately, with 2 men living alone, my house needed some work done. Unfortunately, my husband passed 34 days after my mom which made it harder for me to fix my house with the loss of my husband's check. It took me 10 months to move out but thankfully, I am back in my own house now. After my mom's passing, her property became the property of her 6 children. My siblings are now wanting to charge me rent for the 10 months I lived there rent free after my mom's passing. Can they do that?
3 Answers
No
As an owner, you have no obligation to pay rent to other owners.
Notwithstanding, even if you were not an owner, rent cannot be levied retrospectively. That is, even if you were someone totally unrelated to the owners, if they allowed you to live there without agreeing on rent beforehand, they cannot subsequently demand rent afterwards.
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In France, yes, absolutely.
L'indivisaire qui use ou jouit privativement de la chose indivise est, sauf convention contraire, redevable d'une indemnité.
The co-owner who uses the co-owned thing, unless agreed otherwise, owes an allowance.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI000006432422
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In Germany as well as in the U.S. exists the concept of an implied-in-fact contract. It describes a mutual agreement — a contract — which has not been explicitly expressed in written or spoken words. Instead, the parties entered into the contract by acting in a manner consistent with an agreement.
Usually, this construct is used to prevent somebody from taking an unfair advantage, which makes your case a bit atypical. The text book example is a customer of a restaurant who never signed a contract or even said that he would pay; instead, he sat down, ordered and ate. Both parties acted in a manner which must be understood, in context, as a contract over the purchase of food.
Rental contracts also can be established simply by living in a place and paying a fixed sum for that every month. After some time, a contract has been entered through conduct implying an intent. The landlord must provide the usual services (which, because nothing has been specified, are the legal defaults, if any), and the tenant must continue to pay the now-customary sum of money.
If your siblings
- knew you were living there,
- did not object and
- did not demand rent during that time or announced that they expected compensation later,
I would argue that you and your siblings entered such an implicit contract which allowed you to live in your mother's house, possibly as an acknowledgement and compensation for services rendered to your mother in their stead, or because they wanted to support you in a time of difficulty.
Your case is atypical because, indeed, you used a service without paying for it. But because your relationship to your siblings is not primarily a business relationship and the house was your mother's home, and you had helped your mother before, the usual expectation that rent be payed does, in my opinion, not necessarily apply.
A quite different take is that the previous owners, your parents, gave you permission to live in the house together with them, for free. Because it was never agreed that you move out when they die, you actually have a continuing right to live there, for free. The permission your parents gave you carried over to the new owners, which is you and your siblings. This hinges a bit on implicit or explicit agreements: Was your position more that of a service person whose presence is tied to the service, or was it a "family group house" situation? Was it discussed with your siblings what would happen when your parents die or move out?
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