Family Death During Lease

Ask the Hackrs
1

Sorry for the morbid topic, but not exactly sure what to do here.

My mother in law suddenly passed away with a lease on her vehicle. There is a material amount of equity in the lease, but the lease contract stipulates death as a default provision subject to all sorts of termination penalties.

I’m wondering wtf to do. I don’t necessarily want to call Honda Financial and try to work something out with them if it’s going to screw us over with other potential options by alerting them. Should we try to buy it out and sign over title through the estate? My wife is the sole heir. Any advice for workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

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Gonna guess a buy out requires the signature of the lessee

3

They may approve a family transfer of the lease in a case like this, but you also may screw yourself by even requesting it.

4

You’ve seen this before?

5

Yes but long long time ago and wasn’t Honda.

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I’d say process a buy out with local Honda hopefully for close to equity, tell them you’ll otherwise return to different Honda that way they’ll jump on doing it. But obviously can backfire…

7

Sometimes, you are able to use power of attorney with a death certificate and just sell off the car if you are trying to get equity out of it.

Probate Transfer I think it is called. Typically have done it with paid off cars.

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Wow, considering a PoA dies with the deceased im surprised that worked

9

Condolences to you and your family op.

I think Calvin is misnaming the estate executor?

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I suspect that, I just learned recently that a PoA is useless after a person dies, so when I saw his post, I went, oh no, that isn’t going to work.

I am hoping that an Executor can transfer a Lease though I have my doubts as the lease is owned by the Bank (Rented by the Deceased) and in today’s market they want it back, if that car was way underwater I can see why the bank would want to pass liability to someone else.

1 Like
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Thanks for the replies. Got a game plan in place with our attorney… we’ll see if it works. I’ll let you guys know the steps we took if it does indeed work.

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