For a decade, Sandra Bonilla lived at Shavano Park Apartments in San Antonio, Texas. Last June, Bonilla died at age 91. Recently though, Bonilla's children received a bill for $15,676 in back rent. The total is $14,368 of "accelerated rent" and $1,117 as a penalty for breaking her two-year lease.
You might think this is an easily-fixed error on the part of the landlord. However, according to NEWS4SA, the bill itself lists the reason that Bonilla no longer lives there: "deceased."
Bonilla's son David Naterman explains that when his mom died, the family "went to the apartment complex, spoke to the leasing manager and he told us that he would use the security deposit towards the cleaning and turning over the apartment and that they would terminate the lease."
He claims they sent a termination letter and still received a notice from the apartment complex threatening to alert a credit bureau or pursue legal action. Good luck with that, says debt lawyer Bill Clanton.
"The landlord can charge for about 30 days once the lease is terminated, you can't get blood from a turnip and you certainly can't get rent from a dead person," Clanton said.
Previously:
• 'Sovereign citizen' tenant decapitated landlord with sword over rent dispute, say Hartford, CT police
• Sideburns, handlebar mustaches, and tiny trunks – the wild world of landlord-tenant disputes in the 1970s
