[catmunn]

HELP> How would you word a provision binding the landowner/customer's successors and assigns of the parties to a contract agreement? (ie: A customer dies and his wife carries the contract terms forward or a family member buys the propertyfrom the original owner)

[Stonehenge]

Do you think you'll have a lot of customers dying on you?

In all seriousness, if you have a client pass away, you're going to want to be understanding and flexible with the situation, not assert your contractual rights in looking for who's now liable. If it were me and my wife passed away and you came knocking on my door about payment/continuation within days of her passing, we might have a discussion about your passing as well.

I'm no lgeal expert, but I'm not sure you can obligate a party to something that they didn't explicitly agree to.

I'm not sure what the realm of your projects will include, and if there will be projects that span years, but I think the need for a provision like this might be remote. Though I'm interested to hear if others have a provision like this in their contracts.

I would recommend you speak with an attorney on this one.

[catmunn]

Thanks for your input-As a student of garden design, it is our instructor who is saying that we must put this line into our contract. It does seem insensitive-but if you think about it-It could lead to real problems if it's not written out legally.

[Stonehenge]

I would ask your instructor:

1) How he is qualified to advise and/or judge any terms in a written contract (is he an attorney)?

2) What exactly would you lose by not having this provision? What would you gain? And tell him to think big picture - what kind of effect will ramrodding a contract down a surviving spouses throat do for the general PR of your firm in the community?

If (s)he is worried about lost revenue, if receivables are managed appropriately, nothing will be lost.

But knowing this is a class project and not for your business puts this in a different perspective. In general you're going to want to run your "real" documents past a real attorney for review.

Good luck!

[PSUscaper]

"In all seriousness, if you have a client pass away, you're going to want to be understanding and flexible with the situation, not assert your contractual rights in looking for who's now liable. If it were me and my wife passed away and you came knocking on my door about payment/continuation within days of her passing, we might have a discussion about your passing as well"

I have to ask if you really mean this stone.

I mean, if you were at the end of a contract, and lets say, the client owed you 25% of the final bill at completion and they did pass away, are you saying you are 'understanding' to the thought of losing 25% of a contract.

I know it is a sick world, and the thought of chasing down a widowed wife for money is not all that pleasant, but.......

If I had a wife and told her we are going to 'pass up' on our daughter's college tuition check that was coming out of that job, your right, I may have to be worried about a discussion of me passing away too!

I never thought about this aspect, and perhaps it is something to consider. Maybe not on small contracts, but if I'm doing a 100k plus project I think it is a concern.

[catmunn]

Ok-you have a point. However, it isn't all about knocking on a door the day after a death for the money-how about other family members if they move in, or successors.
I guess that it is best just to put a time limit on your contractual agreement.

[dan deutekom]

If a client passes away during the process of a project I would assume that work would stop until the estate is settled? I also assume that the estate would be responsible to pay all incurred debts? We should also be billing and collecting often enough so that our exposure is low. I don't think we should needlessly complicate our contracts to include the eventuality of death.

[HardDaysKnight]

If you get amount 1 down on contract, amount 2 on 1st day of
deliveries, and amount 3 the next day of installation, you will
feel easier about whether a customer dies or becomes disabled,
fired/ laid-off etc.. The final payment is the remainder of the
profit. We break the 4th payment up into how many days left
divided by that figure. We don't have problem signing clients
or getting paid. Our customers like this payment schedule and we feel safe also.

[start2finish]

harddaysknight

your payment schedule has my interest.

It is late and I don't seem to follow, can you elaborate, sorry for the thread hijack

as for the death clause, we added this in a contract for some land we lease on 5 year terms, all payment up front. It is for hunting rights, and in most cases the land is usually put up for sale to pay taxes, etc.. this is to protect our investment, but for landscaping. I would not think of putting this in a contract unless te job is going to be very very big, over 12 months.

[Nathaniel Carr]

I have both parties sign the contract and the payment agreement. Seems like that would have you covered.

Unless they both die! Then what do you do?!