Okay, let me start with that I am trying to clear up a little mystery. Have a friend who later declared bankruptcy after being handed a number of high cost medical bills for his wife’s treatment after a stroke induced coma ( she is conscious now, but seems to be worsening and is still mostly paralyzed).
Said friend didn’t pay rent for 9 years and the landlord was paying the tenant’s electric bill. Tenant’s daughter finally returns to visit dad and mom ( who are in different nursing facilities in different prefectures) and was later shown amounts for what was covered for the tenants ( her father and mother) totaling over ¥22 million!
Landlord is only talking to the daughter, but this mystifies me why this happened ( I only found out some details shared via email with another party involved with this matter). When I had first heard about it, I thought it was 9 months while my friend was kind of experiencing a mental breakdown as his finances unraveled. But it was clarified as 9 years after they had paid regular rent for probably close to 20 years, then ‘this arrangement’ started.
Why would the landlord do this? My wife had a couple of similar theories, but I want to see if someone has some other plausible reason why eviction was started but only after the above events occurred.
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My guesses are
* the deficits it creates keeps the landlord just below the next tax bracket
* the landlord thinks the debt will be inherited by the daughter and paid anyway through life insurance
* the landlord doesn’t enjoy the trouble of going through the court to kick the tenant out, then spend a large sum of money to renovate the place and then not knowing if and when they can get a new tenant
Is the landlord a relative or lifelong friend of any of them or is he a Buddhist?
Okay if I understand it the tenant, your friend, is the parent. They have no assets after declaring bankruptcy and being put in a nursing facility in a different prefecture than their ailing wife who is also in a nursing facility.
The daughter is being asked to assume a 22million JPY debt by the landlord for unpaid rent plus electricity over 9 years.
How long ago did your friend declare bankruptcy? How long has he been in a nursing facility.
Put simply the daughter should tell the landlord to seek a judgment in court against the debtor and leave her alone or she’ll call the police. Since there is no inheritance there is 0 reason for her to assume the debts of her parents, your friends.
And it’s incredibly annoying and difficult to evict someone especially after a 20 years tenancy. The bankruptcy would have interrupted that repayment depending on when it happened. And as a property owner you don’t want the property sitting with no power because it can start to deteriorate causing significantly more damage than of you just pay the bill.
In Japan, kids inherits their parents debt. Its common in Japanese culture.
I feel like I’m having a stroke trying to understand what any of this is saying.
So what is your wife’s theory?
Really confused with this story but it sounds like that landlord got screwed out of 9 years worth of rent.
It’s probably because of the 10 year of 消滅時効 on the debt. The debt expires after 10 yrs if the lender didn’t take an action on it.
Reading the title I honestly thought this was going to be about using a washiki toilet. 😂 disappointed.
I feel like objectively the only thing that makes sense is that kicking out the renters is a big legal hassle. but with a bit of fantasy I can imagine many constellation where it makes sense. you say they weren’t friends, but they’ve been living there for over 20 years. perhaps at least some of those 9 years were spent with the landlord having sympathy for the tenant, especially if the landlord knew the wife just had a stroke. also, never underestimate the wealth of Japanese old people (I assume the landlord is old, sorry for that). I know a guy who owns a huge estate and land around it that he just lets rot and fall apart. he doesn’t sell it because he doesn’t care about the money, and he doesn’t maintain it because he has another huge house and now is too old for that. perhaps that landlord owns 20 apartments in town and is absolutely loaded. maybe the 9 years of lost rent are more of a nuisance to him rather than a real issue.
~~but of course the moment there’s potential money to be had with the daughter he got huge eyes and his mouth watered, that’s just how the owning class is.~~