Have you had this happen? You decide to take a trip to Montgomery County, Maryland. You visit for a weekend in September, and the gutters have not been cleaned, the property tax notice is unopened on the counter, and a contractor who quoted a roof repair in June has apparently been paid twice. In older Kensington or Chevy Chase neighborhoods where many homes have been owned by the same family for forty years, this pattern is familiar.
The house is the largest asset, and it is the first thing to slip.
The question nobody wants to ask and you are not alone.
Property inheritance attorney Maryland Questions to consider. Can your parent(s) still make and communicate decisions about their own property? That is the legal standard that matters, and it is not the same as being forgetful. It's important to understand that Maryland courts do not appoint a guardian of the property because a person is aging or making choices the family dislikes. They appoint one when the person cannot manage their property and affairs effectively because of a disability, and when no less restrictive alternative exists.
Check for a power of attorney first.
Estate planning attorney Montgomery County MD Power of Attorney. If your parent(s) signed a durable financial power of attorney while they had capacity, the person named in it can usually pay the taxes, deal with the insurance carrier, hire the roofer, and, if the document grants that authority explicitly, sell or lease the real estate. No court, no hearing, no annual reporting. Before assuming guardianship is necessary, search the file cabinet, ask the family attorney (or find an attorney) and check with the bank. A valid power of attorney that everyone forgot about can save a family many months and many thousands of dollars.
What guardianship of the property involves if there is no power of attorney.
Most don't know this until they go through it. If there is no usable power of attorney and the property is at risk, a petition for guardianship of the property gets filed in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. The petition requires certificates from two health care professionals who have examined your parent(s), notice to interested family members, and the appointment of an attorney to represent your parent's interests. Your parent(s) has the right to contest it. If the court appoints a guardian, that guardian must post a bond, file an inventory of assets, and submit annual accountings to the court.
Selling the house is its own step, don't assume you can sell it.
Here is the part that catches families off guard. Being appointed guardian of the property does not automatically give you authority to sell the family home. Maryland treats the sale of a ward's real estate as a separate matter requiring court approval, and the court will want to see why the sale serves your parent's interests, how the price was determined, and where the proceeds will go. If the plan is to sell the house to pay for assisted living, that petition should be prepared alongside the guardianship rather than months later, when a buyer is waiting and the settlement date is slipping.
Do the maintenance while the legal process runs
It all takes time. Guardianship petitions take time. Meanwhile the house still needs heat, insurance that reflects whether anyone is living there, and a current tax account. Document everything you spend on your parent's behalf. A guardian's accounting goes much more smoothly when the receipts already exist.
The time to talk is NOW. Guardianship and real estate intersect constantly, and handling one without the other leaves families stuck. The Law Office of Brian Gormley handles both, serving Kensington, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, and Montgomery County. If this September brought a hard realization about a parent and their home, a conversation now is far better than a crisis in February. The Law Office of Brian Gormley LLC in Bethesda can help you.
