PMAM Legislative Alert
HB 4613 Signed Into Law, October 8, 2013
From I. Matthew Miller, Swistak & Levin, P.C. PMAM Legislative Chair
Dear PMAM Member,
This afternoon I will have the privilege of watching Gov. Rick Snyder sign HB 4613 into law. When it goes into effect today, this new law will make it easier for landlords to remove the property of deceased tenants without judicial action. I drafted the first version of this bill almost six years ago and an amended version of it will finally become law. The Property Management Association of Michigan (PMAM), for which I serve as chair of the legislative committee, was the driving force behind this bill and without the hard work of all of its members and leaders, and especially Mia McNeil of our lobbying firm, Kelley Cawthorne, as well as our friends in the state legislature, this bill would not have passed.
The new law, which will be located at MCL 600.2918 (3)(D), allows landlords a mechanism to recover possession of their premises within a reasonable time after a tenant dies and to allow the removal and disposal of unclaimed property from the premises without judicial action. If everything works as smoothly as possible, a landlord could get an apartment back as quickly as 28 days after the last surviving tenant of the apartment dies. This will reduce the amount of lost rent and the costs involved to the landlord in recovering possession of these premises. This law is primarily intended for rental homes and apartments. While it has some applicability to manufactured housing, its use will be somewhat limited there.
The new law allows a landlord to remove the items within the leased premises and get possession back subject to a number of conditions: The landlord must know or believe in good faith that the last surviving tenant has been dead for at least 18 days, the landlord must not have been notified of the existence of a probate estate for the deceased tenant and there is no such estate opened in the county where the premises are located (the landlord must check with the probate court), the current rent is not paid, the landlord attempted to contact the authorized representative of the decedent (as explained further below), the landlord informed the county public administrator (also explained below), and the landlord posted a notice on the door of the premises at least 10 days prior to entry that the landlord intends to repossess the premises.
In order to use this law, however, there is a new requirement for the landlord at the time of lease-signing. The landlord must inform the tenant in writing of the tenant's option to provide contact information for an authorized person the landlord could contact in the event of the tenant's death. This notice can be in the lease or on a separate sheet of paper handed to the tenant. For tenants who currently reside in rental housing, the landlord must offer this option in writing now to allow the landlord to use this statute should the tenant die while residing in the premises. If the tenant provides the contact information, the landlord must then make a reasonable attempt to contact the person named to ask him to open an estate within 28 days from the date of the tenant's death. However, the landlord is not responsible if the contact information is not correct or if the authorized person does not respond. If the landlord reaches the authorized person, then the authorized person may open a probate estate within 28 days from the date of the tenant's death and if she does, the landlord must proceed through the legal process to remove the items from the leased premises.
In addition - and this is extremely important - if no one opens an estate (including the tenant's authorized person), the landlord must notify the county's public administrator (or if there is not one, the state public administrator) and inform the public administrator that the tenant is deceased and the landlord intends to enter the premises pursuant to this law. At that point, the public administrator has the option to ask the landlord for access to the leased property for inspection, which, upon presentation of proper credentials, the landlord must give. At the public administrator's sole discretion and expense, the public administrator may open an estate. If he does, then the matter proceeds with the service of a demand for possession to the public administrator and the matter proceeds as a normal eviction. The public administrator has only 10 days (which are the same 10 days after the notice is posted on the door) to inspect the leased premises and to open the estate. If the public administrator declines to open the estate and no estate exists, then if all of the above-described conditions exist the landlord may enter the premises, remove the items within the premises, and re-take possession of the premises.
Finally, this new law is part of the "wrongful eviction" statute which allowed a tenant to sue for damages for wrongful eviction "within 1 year from the time the cause of action arises or becomes known to the plaintiff." In HB 4613, we removed the phrase "or becomes known to the plaintiff." This means that the statute of limitations is no longer open-ended as it was before and if a plaintiff does not file suit within one year of the allegedly-wrongful eviction, the case is barred. This is a tremendous improvement in the law and what it means is that landlords will only have to maintain their records of following this new deceased tenant law for one year. After that, a landlord could dispose of the documentation. Further, any claim a tenant might bring for wrongful eviction, even those which did not arise out of this section of the statute, is now limited by a more-clarified, one-year statute of limitations.
This is a major change in the law with which you need to be familiar and admittedly, it is confusing. Please review the new statutory language at the link below in Section (3)(d) and, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Also, please feel free to share this email with others in your organization whom I may have inadvertently omitted from this email blast.
http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2013-2014/billenrolled/House/pdf/2013-HNB-4613.pdf
Thanks,
I. Matthew Miller
Swistak & Levine, P.C.
PMAM Legislative Chair |