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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?

Delia Valle
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    Which country do you live in? – o.m. Dec 18 '23 at 06:01
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    Jurisdiction is really important. Dale M's answer might not be right in mine (England) where in some circumstances joint owners may owe an occupation charge (which would seem to you like rent) for use of the property. It is complicated. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 10:07
  • @FrancisDavey - But surely even then, the agreement would have to be made before rent/occupation charges began? (IANALBASOFTI) – komodosp Dec 19 '23 at 10:17
  • @komodosp: what does the BASOFTI in IANALBASOFTI means? Can not immediately find it through Google. – willeM_ Van Onsem Dec 19 '23 at 10:27
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    @willeM_VanOnsem Sorry I was rambling a bit... "By Any Stretch Of The Imagination" – komodosp Dec 19 '23 at 10:59
  • @komodosp - occupation charges (in English law) do not arise out of an agreement, so there would not have to be one, no. Whether it applies in the OP's case is difficult to tell, but a simple answer of "no" is wrong. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 11:03
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    Depending on where you live, it would be very useful to know whether your siblings objected to (or gave you permission to) you living in the house on your own. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 12:33
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    Did your siblings at any point prior to you leaving your parents house ask you to start paying rent, or compel you to make any sort of agreement to pay rent? Because that is an essential part of answering this question accurately - in particular, for the 10 month period in which you all co-owned the house. – Zibbobz Dec 19 '23 at 14:00
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    You can charge your 5 other siblings fees for looking after your parents retroactively. Would they like that? – stackoverblown Dec 19 '23 at 15:46

3 Answers3

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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.

Dale M
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    Which country does this apply to? – o.m. Dec 18 '23 at 06:01
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    And even if the siblings cannot legally oblige the OP and instead they try to guilt-trip her, she could answer that she was there for years taking care of their parents, and it would have cost a lot more to hire a caretaker. – vsz Dec 18 '23 at 11:56
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    @vsz Or, if they are charging her for rent retrospectively, she could charge them for the care costs retrospectively, which might be a way higher amount. So they have time to think about whether to go on their way. – glglgl Dec 18 '23 at 12:45
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    Indeed, looking at my parent's latest 24 hour care bill, I'd say your siblings owe you big time (like $30,000 per month). – Jon Custer Dec 18 '23 at 14:10
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    "As an owner, you have no obligation to pay rent to other owners." I'm quite certain that's false. That is, if you're saying "Other owners have no standing to charge you rent". If you have a one-third ownership, then other owners absolutely can charge you rent, with a fair amount being two-thirds of the market rate. – Acccumulation Dec 18 '23 at 16:32
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    @Acccumulation The amount would have to be decided beforehand. As OP was living there already rent-free for 8 years helping to care for their parents, a definite agreement would have to be made among the siblings. If 4/6 of them agreed to rent out the house and came up with a rate, OP would need to agree to that rate. They could begin eviction proceedings, but not charger her back rent as the current unwritten tenancy agreement with the parents was to live there rent-free apparently. – Jason Goemaat Dec 18 '23 at 17:34
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    @Acccumulation you do not have to pay rent to use your own stuff. That’s what ownership means at law. You might want to make such an arrangement with co owners and that arrangement might be an enforceable contract, but you don’t have to. You can use it because you own it, but so can they. – Dale M Dec 18 '23 at 19:07
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    The main exception to this is the rule of ouster. If you oust your co-owners from the property they are entitled to share in FMV rent from you for the duration of the ouster. This is a restitutionary remedy and not a contract concept. – ohwilleke Dec 18 '23 at 19:39
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    I think @ohwilleke's comment would make a good addition to this answer, as an aid to intuition. – wizzwizz4 Dec 18 '23 at 20:08
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    @DaleM But if you only have partial ownership, do you have the right to exclude the other co-owners from using it? The other siblings might have wanted to rent it out, but couldn't because the OP was living there. But they should have said something when the OP first started living there after Mom passed, not waited 10 months. – Barmar Dec 19 '23 at 00:21
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    @ohwilleke I've never heard of the "rule of ouster"! In which jurisdiction or country does this rule exist? – Reversed Engineer Dec 19 '23 at 07:21
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    @Barmar if joint owners cannot agree on the use of their property, I think most jurisdictions will have rules allowing the dispute to be resolved judicially, but I cannot imagine any will have rules that favor an owner's retrospective wish that the property had been used differently during an historical period that had never been expressed at the time. – Will Dec 19 '23 at 09:34
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    Without a jurisdictional tag, this answer is useless. I immediately thought of an occupation charge (applicable in English law) as a possibility, though it would only fit some fact patterns. Six people cannot all "own" property for instance. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 10:09
  • @Will - we do not know "that had never been expressed at the time". An important question, in English law, would be whether the other joint owners could or could not jointly enjoy the property along with the occupier. If not, there is usually an occupation charge to pay. In England, death would not (necessarily) immediately pass property anyway. And joint ownership would be under a trust, and so much might depend on how that trust arose. But the basic answer is that joint owners can very much owe money to each other. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 11:06
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    @ReversedEngineer Ouster is an old, nearly universal common law rule. See e.g., Pico v. Columbet, 12 Cal. 414 (1859), Lohmann v. Lohmann, 50 N.J.Super. 37 , 68, 141 A.2d 84 (App.Div. 1958), Newman v. Chase, 70 N.J. 254, 359 A.2d 474 (1976); Fundaburk v. Cody, 261 Ala. 25, 72 So. 2d 710, 48 A.L.R.2d 1295 (1954), and California Civil Code § 843. For Australian cases as of 2011 see https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au/bitstream/handle/10072/403570/Galloway477380-Published.pdf?sequence=3 – ohwilleke Dec 19 '23 at 11:42
  • @FrancisDavey we don't "know" what was expressed at the time, but the fact that they did is a premise of the question: "they are now wanting" the use of the home to be viewed differently. It's hard to imagine any failed attempt at enjoyment of the property escaping the OP's notice while they were occupying it, and it would be a strange detail to fail to mention if in fact such a thing had happened. – Will Dec 19 '23 at 12:26
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    There doesn't have to have been an attempt to occupy for occupation charges to be payable. Rather than go into what may be irrelevant detail - my point remains: we need to know what jurisdiction we are talking about in order for any sense to be made of any answer. Simply saying a bald "no" without saying where this applies is not a helpful answer. It would be improved by being made jurisdictionally specific. – Francis Davey Dec 19 '23 at 12:32
  • "you do not have to pay rent to use your own stuff. That’s what ownership means at law." Ownership means the right to use, the right to deny, and the right to benefit. You are saying that the right to use of one owner somehow trumps the rights of the others to deny use if rent is not paid, and to benefit from the rent value. Certainly, stock ownership of a company does not grant you the right to use company assets. – Acccumulation Dec 20 '23 at 05:22
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    @Acccumulation stock ownership does not give control of a company - that’s the role of directors. What stock ownership does is give you a right to dividends and a right to vote. – Dale M Dec 20 '23 at 05:53
  • @Acccumulation ""As an owner, you have no obligation to pay rent to other owners." I'm quite certain that's false. That is, if you're saying "Other owners have no standing to charge you rent". If you have a one-third ownership, then other owners absolutely can charge you rent, with a fair amount being two-thirds of the market rate." DaleM is absolutely correct in a case where there other co-owners aren't ousted. – ohwilleke Dec 20 '23 at 21:47
  • This answer is plain wrong. It may be true under specific circumstances, but in many circumstances, some type of retroactive payment may be due (as explained e.g. in Maxime's answer). – sleske Dec 21 '23 at 11:11
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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

Maxime
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  • Intriguing. Does this paragraph, along with the previous one ("A défaut d'accord entre les intéressés, l'exercice de ce droit est réglé, à titre provisoire, par le président du tribunal.") mean that there is no way to determine the height of the allowance except by going to the tribunal? – Stef Dec 20 '23 at 22:45
  • Also, how does this combine with the fact that the OP had been living rent-free in that house when the house was the property of the parents, by agreement with the parents? Isn't this a "convention contraire"? This could be considered a prior agreement, especially if the OP's siblings never said "we want to change the agreement that you had with the previous owner" after they inherited the house. – Stef Dec 20 '23 at 22:50
  • @Stef For the height of the allowance you either come to an understanding with your co-owners, and you are absolutely free to choose whatever you want (as long as you agree) - or a judge will settle it for you. For the previous agreement because OP lived there, definitively not for a rent-free verbal agreement. However, should OP have a renting contract, even for a very low rent, then it is a previous agreement. – Maxime Dec 21 '23 at 08:14
  • With a big caveat being "don't do tax fraud". – Maxime Dec 21 '23 at 08:17
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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?

Peter - Reinstate Monica
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  • Good answer. There is a similar question on frag-einen-anwalt.de, with a similar conclusion - to charge rent, the others would first have to explicitly object to the person occupying the house for free. If they stay silent, that would count as tacit agreement. – sleske Dec 21 '23 at 11:26