legality of a dead person’s signature on a warranty deed
I hope someone can help me since the Title company
I have been working with is on the fence here. I’ve been working the
past two years on purchasing a lot that has almost 30 owners since
the legal owner has been deceased for 15+ years. The title company
has been working on this just as long and are driving me crazy.
Here is my dilemma: I have a warranty deed that now has all of
the heirs’ signatures. Unfortunately, two of the heirs have died
during this two year period. I have notarized signatures from the two
deceased on the warranty deed obtained prior to their deaths. Are
their signatures legally binding or do I now have to acquire the
signatures of all of the legal heirs of these two deceased? Thanks
in advance!
Sheri
ANSWER
From another investor:
Just file the deed, along with the appropriate Affidavit of Heirship
documents. The dead people were still alive when the deed was signed
and notarized and that makes your deal legal. No extra signatures
are required from the heirs of the dead people. If the Title Company
is telling you that signatures from the NEW heirs are needed, they
are DEAD wrong (pun intended). The dead people’s interest in the
property transferred to you the INSTANT they signed the properly
notarized Deed.
I’m assuming that you also have an issue concerning where any monies
due to these dead people is supposed to go. The money will have to
go to the estate (assuming there is one) of the dead people and that
could be a problem, depending on the status of the estate. The title
company may have to hold this money in escrow for a long period of
time until the estate of the dead people figures out what to do with
the money. The Title Company won’t like this, but as the 3rd party
escrow agent in this deal, this is THEIR problem, not yours. That is
what they get paid the big bucks to do. They should be able to
complete your end of the tranaaction, assuming there are no other
issues present. The Title Company will try to make it your problem,
just don’t let them get away with it.
Additional Answer:
Sheri,
I concur with with the previous answer, however, I will add an experience that I had, in a similar situation where I did go ahead and close on a house where one of the one owners had died.
Unfortunately, after closing, some of the other heirs started fighting and came to me claiming that the deed had a forged signature on it (from a dead man).
In this situation, I basically told them to give me back my money or let go of the deed claim, and they refused both – hoping the title company would pay them off. I then called my title company to ask them to defend my title…
From this experience I learned many lessons
1) A title company informed me that they won’t actually do anything until someone hires a lawyer and files a lawsuit against the title. In other words, I had a cloud on my title, and no opportunity to sell the property, and no opportunity to clear it until some future date, after probate and after the heirs filed their suit (typically 2+ years).
2) I could have just called their bluff, however the heirs had a somewhat reasonable claim, they had at least some documents from the dead man that showed inconsistent signatures, and they got the notary to admit that they were not sure if the person that signed was indeed the person in question.
3) I was left in a position of sitting on the property for years and waiting them out (while continuing to make the significant payments on the loan), or going forward and making the improvements to the property (i.e. rebuilding a house), and then risk losing the improvements at trial – this is because your title insurance (upon losing a title claim) only REPAYS you what you paid for the property and NOT any improvements or MORTGAGE PAYMENTS made after you buy it.
I found myself between a rock and a harder place. In the end, I basically offered all of the heirs a pile of money to sign a document releasing any future claim. It sucked and it was not in the budget, but it was the least pain solution.
Lesson learned? Well, this was an unusual situation and strange things happen. I’m not sure I could have avoided this, however, in the future I would personally make sure that everyone involved in a deal is on board before jumping into any purchase of a property that could be touched by probate and/or a feuding family….
Phill
