Avoid pitfall when renting vacation condo

Q. How can a potential lessee be sure the vacation condo owner has not been foreclosed upon before sending rent money, thus, not having a condo to move into. All we have available is the owners name and address.

A. Contact the county recorder where the property is located and ask if anything has been recently recorded either against the property or the owner. Also confirm the alleged owner owns the property you are renting. Then contact the clerk of the circuit court of that county and ask if any lawsuits have been filed against the owner. If both these investigations turn up negative, you can be reasonably assured that, at least at the time of your inquiries, all was well. Of course, if you're renting some time down the road, much can happen in a short period of time.

Q. My wife and I bought our house in 1996 before we were married. I used the VA loan and qualified for the money without my future wife as a co-signer. My wife and I got married the next year, and I told her I would put the house in both our names.

A few years later we went to refinance and I told the broker I wanted both our names on the title. They told me I had to do special paperwork and should get a lawyer. We got a real estate attorney. He had me fill out a quitclaim deed and on it he had me write, "I sold her 100 percent of my property for one dollar." And we got the title put in joint tenancy.

My question is: Why does this seem illogical? We both want to have equal shares of the property. I would think it should have been 50 percent on the quitclaim form. Please let me know if this is correct.

A. Presuming you have the recorded copy of the quitclaim deed, take it to a real estate attorney and explain your concern. What should have occurred was you executing a quitclaim deed conveying the property from yourself to yourself and your spouse as either tenants in common, joint tenants or tenants by the entireties. That would have granted both of you equal interest in the property.

Q. I was reading your column in the Daily Herald and had some questions regarding land trusts. Your columns are very informative.

Along with five other adult siblings, I am a beneficiary of a land trust that was set up some time ago to pass along property from parents to children. Unfortunately, after our parents passed away, no single individual became successor trustee because the terms of the trust did not identify a successor trustee. As a consequence, we six beneficiaries have to act in agreement with each other in matters relating to the disposition of the property.

I want to sell the property and distribute the proceeds but the others want to do nothing right now because of the current state of the real estate market.

So, my questions are these. Are we considered to be tenants in common with respect to our interests in the trust? Is there any legal action I can take to force the sale of the property in trust, distribute the proceeds to the beneficiaries and dissolve the trust? Finally, what would happen to my interest in the trust should I pass away before the trust is dissolved?

I know this is an example of some of the pitfalls of using a land trust to pass along property but your answers could provide a reasonable way to resolve these pending matters.

A. As to how you hold the property, the land trust should define what occurs to a party's interest in the event of his or her death. If not, I believe the presumption would be that you are all tenants in common with each other.

You can file a partition lawsuit and probably force the sale of the property in the event none of the other parties wishes to purchase your interest.

As to what happens to your interest in the event of your death, if you are determined to be tenants in common, your one-sixth interest passes either pursuant to your will or living trust. If you don't have a will or living trust at the time of your death, the intestacy statute of the state where the property is located dictates how your property passes.

• Attorney Tom Resnick's column appears every other week in Homes Plus. Send your questions to Tom Resnick, 345 N. Quentin Road, Palatine IL 60067, by e-mail to tdr100@hotmail.com or call (847) 359-8983.