This week a judge in Brooklyn dismissed a foreclosure case that a bank brought against a dead guy. Normally that doesn't fly.
The borrower died two years before the bank started the foreclosure lawsuit. When a person dies, generally any legal cases in which he or she was involved gets "stayed", i.e. stopped, until a representative of the person's estate is appointed in the Surrogate's Court (called Probate Court most other places). If there is no representative, there can be no lawsuit against the deceased person.
Banks have been known to file petitions in Surrogate's Court to force the appointment of an estate administrator so that a foreclosure could begin or proceed. That's what the bank in this case should have done. Instead, Justice Francois Rivera dismissed the foreclosure case, forcing the bank to begin at the beginning once an estate representative is appointed.
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