Academy/Collections & Delinquencies
Probate
What happens to a delinquent account when the owner dies
When a delinquent owner dies, the association's claim does not disappear, but it must now be pursued against the estate through probate rather than against the individual. Probate imposes its own short filing deadlines, called nonclaim statutes, that can permanently bar the claim if missed. Get counsel involved as soon as you learn of a death.
What changes when an owner dies
The balance an owner ran up before death does not vanish, and any lien already recorded against the unit survives too. What changes is who the association has to deal with. Collection now runs against the deceased owner's estate, and the person the board works with is typically the estate's personal representative, sometimes called an executor or administrator, not whichever family member happens to answer the phone.
That shift matters because probate has its own rules for how a creditor gets paid, and those rules do not care that the association's underlying claim was perfectly valid. See Owner death for the first steps to take once you learn of a death, and Liens for how the association's lien works before this point.
The nonclaim statute: a deadline that can end your claim
Probate runs on its own clock, separate from whatever reminder-letter or demand-letter timeline the board is used to. A nonclaim statute is a probate-specific deadline that permanently bars a creditor's claim if it is missed, regardless of how valid the debt was.
In California, for example, an association generally has one year from the date of death to bring an action, and once probate has been opened, as little as four months from the personal representative's appointment to file a formal creditor's claim within that probate. These numbers are California's only. Check your own state's probate code, and loop in counsel as soon as a death is confirmed rather than waiting for the next board meeting.
If no probate has been opened
Sometimes nobody opens probate at all, because the estate is small or the family is slow to act. The association is not stuck waiting on someone else to file. It can petition the probate court to open an estate itself, as a creditor, to preserve its ability to collect.
This is not a do-it-yourself step. Probate procedure, filing rules, and deadlines vary by state and sometimes by county, so bring this to your association attorney rather than assuming the debt is simply gone. It is also worth confirming the difference between this scenario and a bankruptcy filing, since the two pause collection for very different reasons and on very different clocks.
Check yourself
Answer before you read the explanation, recalling it is what makes it stick.
A delinquent owner dies and no one has opened probate. What can the association do?
Probate opens on a delinquent owner's estate. What should worry the board most?
After a delinquent owner dies, who does the association now pursue for the unpaid assessments?
Sources
Collections & Delinquencies
Next, see how to keep your collection process consistent for every owner, death and probate included, in Consistency in collections.
Whether a nonclaim statute applies, how long it runs, and how much time you have to file a claim once probate opens all vary by state. The one-year and four-month figures above are California's only.