If I Find Priceless Treasure In My [Rented] Attic (Not Seeking Legal Advice)

[Melbourne]

Then tenant took all my Dad’s stuff out of the attic (which was unlocked for fire safety) and had a lawn sale. The neighbours called the cops eventually, but that didn’t get anything back, including his electric railway set. I was 7.

[herman_and_bill]

If rental of the house includes the use of the attic you shouldn’t have to pay rent to store someone elses belongings. Do as you want with it.

[Czarcasm]

@herman_and_bill

If rental of the house includes the use of the attic you shouldn’t have to pay rent to store someone elses belongings. Do as you want with it.

Very bad advice. Rental of a house does not convey ownership of contents already there. Otherwise, it would be o.k. to sell the fridge and stove also.

[astro]

It may not even belong to the homeowner.
$500,000 Found in House Walls Belongs to Estate, Not Homeowners

You buy a dilapidated house and in the course of renovations you find a huge amount of money hidden in the walls. The cash is yours, right? Not according to an Arizona appeals court, which recently ruled that $500,000 found in the walls of a house belongs to the heirs of the man who put it there, not to the house’s current owners.

Robert A. Spann had a habit of hiding cash and other valuables in unusual places in the homes he lived in. His two daughters knew of his pattern, and for seven years after he died in 2001 they found stocks and bonds, as well as hundreds of military-style green ammunition cans, some of which contained gold or cash, hidden throughout his Paradise Valley, Arizona, home.

In 2008, the daughters sold the rundown house “as is” to a couple. The couple did some remodeling, in the course of which a worker for the contracting company found two ammunition cans full of cash in the kitchen wall and another two inside the framing of an upstairs bathroom. The cash totaled $500,000. After the worker reported the find to his boss, the boss took the cans but did not tell the couple who owned the house about them. The worker, however, eventually informed the couple of the discovery and the police ultimately took control of the $500,000.

The couple and the contractor sued each other for the money. In the meantime, Robert Spann’s daughter Karen Grande, who was the personal representative of his estate, filed a petition in probate court on behalf of the estate to recover the money. The two cases were consolidated in June 2009.

The trial court ruled that the money belonged to the estate and the couple appealed, claiming that Mr. Spann’s family had abandoned the cash by leaving it in the house when it was sold “as is.”

In a May 31, 2012, ruling, the Court of Appeals of Arizona agrees with the trial court. The court rules that while “finders keepers” may work on the schoolyard, in Arizona in order to abandon personal property, “one must voluntarily and intentionally give up a known right.” The court finds that because there is no evidence that Mr. Spann’s estate intended to relinquish any valuable items in the house, the money is more properly characterized as “mislaid” and still belongs to the estate.

[cochrane]

@Dewey_Finn

Well, one could argue that by junk, I meant “stuff.” And there’s the story in the television journalist Sam Donaldson’s memoir of the foreign correspondent who sent a telegram to his superiors asking if they’d pay to ship his “junk” to the US. Of course in this case, it was a Chinese boat of the type called a “junk.”

To quote George Carlin again: “Did you ever notice that all of your shit is ‘stuff’ and the other guy’s stuff is all ‘shit’?”

[kayaker]

@robert_columbia

If this is true (which I believe it is in the majority of jurisdictions) and the object is sufficiently valuable, the hypothetical renter might want to make a purchase offer on the house in order to gain ownership of the treasure.

So, the renter attempts to buy the house and the landlord drives an unbelievably hard bargain. The tenant ends up paying far more than market value.

Then the new owner of the house discovers that the million dollar pile of gold bricks is actually a hundred dollar pile of lead bricks painted gold and the entire thing was a ruse.

[Jackmannii]

Imagine the OP’s disappointment when he opens the box marked “baseball cards 1900-1920” and finds a pile of shreds and mounds of ancient squirrel poop.

[hajario]

@watchwolf49

Possession is 99% of the law … snatch the loot and run …

You need to learn what “possession is 99% of the law” really means for starters. If you were serious in your advice, you should check your values as well.

[Velocity]

@Dewey_Finn

Hey, the Bible said it was OK to deceive the landlord. Who am I to disagree?

The Biblical parable involved no deception.

[Dewey_Finn]

No deception? “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.” How is re-hiding the “treasure” found in the field before attempting to buy the field not deceptive?

[Dinsdale]

I’m surprised a lawyer hasn’t chimed in yet. Not at all my area of expertise, but I’m not entirely sure the renter has any duty to disclose information he knows about the object. Long time since I studied UCC, but such duty generally applies to vendors/experts in commercial transactions.

Of course the objects belong to someone other than the renter - most likely the house owner. As I see it, the difficulty comes in the renter obtaining clear title to the goods. When he goes to resell them, how does he establish that he owns them? Sure, if reselling for cash, may not be an issue. Long time since law school, but if the goods are of value over $500, I think you’d want some kind of writing to prove that the owner gave them to you. And I think you might want to provide some consideration if you wish to present it as a sale rather than a gift. I could imagine it being awkward for the renter to tell the owner, "Hey, do you mind me cleaning out all this junk. And BTW, will you sign this contract?"

This reflects nothing other than my extremely vague recollections of law school classes several decades ago that I didn’t really attend all that regularly…

[Chronos]

Absent any statement to the contrary, the stuff belongs to the owner of the house. But if the owner tells the tenant that it’s OK to clear out the stuff in the attic, then the owner has given it to the tenant, and I don’t see any reason why the tenant should need to tell the owner about its value beforehand. The owner had the opportunity to clean out, or at least check, the attic himself. If he didn’t, it’s because he probably thought that it’d be a lot of work, and that there was unlikely to be anything of value in it. Usually, he’d be right. By even discovering the treasure at all, the tenant has already undertaken an expense in time and effort, an expense which the owner manifestly considered to be significant, as evidenced by the fact that he chose not to do it. And therefore the tenant should be able to reap the reward of that effort.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Baker

The Bible parable didn’t say what the guy did was okay, it just said he did it. And parables are hypotheticals themselves.

You’re not saying that I’m Jesus are you?

[DrCube]

Morally and legally, the stuff belongs to the owner, barring a lawsuit by Philbert’s estate and a judgment in their favor.

But it seems to me like it would be pretty easy to take the treasure out of the attic, bring it to your parents’ house, and claim you found it there; or hold onto it until you buy your own house; or claim you found it when you were a kid and kept it for sentimental reasons, only now realizing its value, etc. If Diane doesn’t know it exists now, she’ll have no reason or evidence to dispute your story unless you specifically tell her you found it in her attic among boxes that weren’t yours.

[Garula]

Tell the owner what you found, perhaps suggest that you’d be willing to take care of the selling for a share of the profits. Then sleep well at night knowing you’re a decent enough person to not steal from someone even when you know you could have gotten away with it.