Sending notice to an estate

A homeowner recently passed away and had a tenant leasing his house. The tenant had a 1-year lease that expired a week after the owner died. The lease said it would automatically renew for a year when it expired. Our CC&Rs require leases to be in writing and for a minimum length of 1 year. The tenant is claiming that he does have a current lease since the old one "automatically renewed". We don't consider it a valid lease at this point. Aside from that the tenant is in violation of the CC&Rs other than the lease situation. This started right after the owner died. The board wants to send violation notices to the owner who, at this point, is the estate of the deceased homeowner. A probate case was opened just last week but it is very early in the process. According to the court's online case information, there are 2 people vying to be named as executor (or "Personal Representative" as it's known as in Florida).

The HOA is not owed any money at the moment so we can't file as an "interested party" in the case with creditor status. If there was an executor appointed we'd obviously send the letters to him or her. But there is none yet. Who do we need to send the violation notices to? The court? The main attorney listed in the case file? The postal address of the actual house in the community? The tenant? We want to get the violation notices out in a timely fashion. If we knew the court would be selecting an executor next week or the week after, we'd likely wait, but there's no guarantee when that will happen and we feel that it's important to bring the violations to the attention of someone ASAP.

These are on the order of "first notices" and would like to avoid any attorney fees, although going through the attorney is another option. Any suggestions or thoughts?

Some CCRs will contain language that leases be in writing and be for no less than a specific period of time.

I believe a lease is valid if it has language that it automatically renews as long as there isn't language allowing an increase in the rent. I own 5 rental properties and leases are signed each year, 60 days prior to expiration. That is my policy.

If Florida is like California, notice of violations need to be addressed to the landlord, not the tenant. If, in your case, the owner has passed away, you need to wait for the legal transition of ownership.

I was going to add, that some HOA's require that the leases also be filed with the HOA. It appears you're may not. All yours may do is help prevent short term rentals, maybe.

Who do you expect is to file this lease? Considering the owner has passed away? It's NOT the tenant. They are not a HOA member. A copy of the lease would have to be provided by whomever took over the ownership of the property. Which may not be decided yet. It could take time if it's in Probate court. The tenant also doesn't pay the HOA dues.

The HOA has nothing to do with the Tenant and typically the lease agreement. The HOA holds the owner's feet to the ground for the Tenant's violations. Plus I don't really see the point of the HOA even having a copy of the lease. Considering they have no power to evict the tenant.

What has more power? If the HOA makes it a requirement that ALL leases have in them the tenant follows the HOA's rules. Which is typically NOT written in leases. It gives more power to the owners to evict bad tenants if they do this. Otherwise an owner can not evict their tenant for violating HOA rules if it's not a condition of the lease.

I would follow the requirements of Florida law for violation notices. In Texas, we are required to send it certified mail to the owner at the address that the owner provides us. So, I would follow the law, even if I knew that the owner moved or died. I think if you send a violation notice to anyone other than the listed owner at his listed address, it might not be valid, depending on your state law. All of the owner's mail should go to the representative anyway.

Bottom line, sending the notice to the estate or to an executor makes sense but it may not comply with the law. If your not clear about what the law says, I would talk to an attorney.

Because we never saw the first one. The property was being managed by the owner's agent (ex-brother-in-law). He claimed to have a full Power of Attorney from the owner, which we never saw, and that he was leasing the home for 1 year to a renter, but we never received a copy of the lease. The alleged lease renewal was communicated to us by the ex-brother-in-law, again with no copy of the lease, the date the lease term was to start was handwritten over some obvious white-out. We don't trust that the arrangement is on the level. Besides, a Power of Attorney expires upon the death of whoever gave it.