Saint Charles Legal Blog

Being a landlord is not an easy job. If one is not careful, tenants or potential tenants may end up taking one to court. Here are several reasons why landlords in Missouri may be sued.

Reason number one: discriminating against potential tenants. The Fair Housing Act states that landlords cannot ask discriminatory questions. It also says that it is illegal to refuse to rent a property to a person based on his or her race, gender, disability, religion or national origin -- among other things.

There are many benefits to having an estate plan in place, yet many Missouri residents do not. Those who do might be inclined to keep the details of their plans to themselves. While no one really wants to go through the estate planning process, let alone talk to loved ones about it, according to a recently published article, talking about it with one's beneficiaries may be a good idea. 

The article is directed toward millionaires who want to pass their money down to their children. However, the advice given really can apply to most people. The problem with passing along money or other valuables is that beneficiaries may not know what to do with it or they may not use it wisely. This is why it is suggested that people talk to their beneficiaries about what money and valuables mean to them and what they hope their heirs will do with what is given them. 

The Fair Housing Act protects people from discrimination on the basis of factors like disability, religion or race in buying or renting a home. A former tenant of a St. Louis, Missouri, apartment building recently filed a lawsuit against the landlord and owner claiming that they violated her rights under the Fair Housing Act on two different counts. A judge dismissed one of the counts but determined that the plaintiff, an African American woman, had a plausible claim on the other. 

According to the lawsuit, the landlord and the owner of the building allowed law enforcement to search the woman's apartment, which she claimed was a violation of her Fourth Amendment rights. The lawsuit goes on to allege that the landlord and building owner did not renew her lease on account of her race, claiming a violation of the Fair Housing Act. The plaintiff claimed another Fair Housing Act violation over the building owner and the landlord filing a report with authorities claiming that she had stolen property. 

Despite the advice offered up by estate planning experts in Saint Charles for people to do their estate planning early on in their adult lives, a majority of adults still do not have even a will that details how their assets are to be distributed when they die. Your reason for putting off creating your will may be the hope that if you do not create such a document, it will be left to your heirs to decide how to divide your estate (that way, you do not have to worry about offending anyone). Yet that simply is not the case. Rather, if you die without a will (the legal term is for this is "intestate"), it is the state that determines the dispersal of your estate. 

Missouri's guidelines for intestate succession can be found in Section 474.010 of the state's Revised Statutes. Here it states that your surviving spouse will receive your entire estate if you leave no descendants behind. If you do have surviving issue (direct descendants), then your spouse will receive the first $25,000 of your estate, then half of the remaining balance of those descendants are also their descendants (with the remaining half going to your descendants). Your spouse's share of your estate is reduced to exactly half if any of your issue are not also related to them.