We own a family corp that has been leasing a space for four years now. and recently, we were delayed in paying for around 4 mos due the confinement and death of my father. We were in great shock when we found out that the management of the commercial building issued almost half a million.
In some point, we were caught unprepared and most of all, we want to question the following concerns are really legal and permitted to implement by all lessors to have a :
- 3% DAILY interest and charges for delayed payment until full payment has been made
- submeter for aircon and a separate charge of electricity per square meter for the space , NO MERALCO bills presented. They just issue their own monthly computation for the electricity. (NOTE: This was not in the contract, it was only stated that the LESEE is responsible to pay for the electricity and utility bills)
- we are not a restaurant but they charge us around 7,200 for the CUSA monthly which is separate from the computed monthly electricity consumption
We are not a big company and because of the recent death of my father, all the surviving heirs were really caught unprepared, but it seems that they are OVER charged us.
Can we really question them re this and is there any law that cover and protect the surviving heirs from all the liabilities of a death of a Bread winner or head of the family or President of a family corp? Especially for a car loan made by the deceased and a leased property by a family corp headed by the deceased?
We want to settle and meet them halfway, because the only main source of our income is our company. But they recently temporarily closed it because our delayed payments. We understand their rules and regulations but somehow, we want to know what they are imposing are legal and justifiable for a lessee like us, as mentioned above? They are suggesting us to write a proposal on how we can pay them but we need to know whether at some point we can be fully or partial released from any liability that my father made when he was still alive especially with the unpaid monthly dues of our leased property in a commercial area.
Many thanks and looking forward to your soonest advise as we will be having a meeting later with them.
God bless and more power to you all!