KING COUNTY, Wash. — KIRO 7 helped a family get a security deposit back from a landlord who told them their loved one forfeited the deposit because he died before the end of the lease.
Debra Tolbert’s brother, Dennis Hanel, was diagnosed with stage 4 kidney failure and was on dialysis every other day. Tolbert said she found her brother deceased in his room on Jan. 8.
“I went to his bedroom window and knocked and knocked and knocked, and I could see him lying there in bed,” she said.
After cleaning up his unit and returning the key, she received a move-out checklist, indicating that the unit was left in good condition. But she did not receive the $1,400 security deposit he paid when he moved in November of 2016.
Tolbert showed KIRO 7 multiple text messages sent to the landlord, Anthony Narancic, asking about the deposit.
She said she was able to get on the phone with one of his associates who told her, “’He violated the lease by breaking it, because he died.’ I’m like, ‘what?!’”
Tolbert thought she could go to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection for help because they often handle landlord-tenant issues. But on Wednesday, she discovered they could not help because the rental home is one block outside of city limits.
KIRO 7 contacted Narancic, who first said the lease wasn’t "fulfilled" because the tenant vacated it before the end of the lease. He said the lease did not specify anything about death.
He also said Hanel smoked inside the unit, but Tolbert told KIRO 7 he only smoked outside.
KIRO 7’s Natasha Chen sent Narancic a photo of the move-out checklist that showed all conditions were checked "good" and a link to the state law regarding tenant deaths.
Narancic, after receiving more information about this law, contacted both Tolbert and KIRO 7 within an hour to say that he would send Tolbert the security deposit the next day.
Rory O’Sullivan, the senior managing attorney for the King County Bar Association’s Housing Justice Project, said the law was passed last year.
O’Sullivan said the law sets a standard procedure for what happens in the event a tenant dies and is a statute that was proposed by a group of landlords.
He said it “creates a common-sense solution for what’s supposed to happen when a tenant passed away.”
A landlord must notify next of kin, but in this case Tolbert was the one who discovered her brother.
He said a landlord can terminate the lease 15 days after a letter is postmarked that informs the next of kin of the death. Family members, however, can continue to pay rent for another couple of months by special request to be able to have enough time to retrieve personal property.
Once the family clears the unit, “the landlord has two weeks in which to refund any remaining money that’s owed – or provide an explanation of any money that they’re withholding,” O’Sullivan said.