My mother-in-law died recently. Her estate included a 2002 Geo Prizm with 30k miles. We sold the car to a friend for $4500. The full value of the car goes to the escrow (claimed 100% by the state, but they haven’t taken the money yet). It turns out the engine was damaged. We did some investigation and are pretty sure that for the 6000 miles and five years she owned the car, she never had it serviced(!) The friend is getting her $4500 back, and we have to decide whether to rebuild/replace the engine (both estimates so far are $2500) and try again to sell the car, hoping to get more for the sale than we put in for repairs and advertising, or simply junk the car. Three questions: 1) Reading other Q&A here, it sounds like you don’t recommend people buy a used car with a new engine. I wonder if you would make an exception for the case where seller is pretty certain about the reason for the damage? 2) assuming we get it fixed, should we opt to rebuild or replace the engine? 3) the Q&A suggests “get a good warranty” for this work. What’s a good warranty? Thanks!!
First question - you said something about the $4500 ‘claimed 100% by the state’ - what’s that mean? The heirs don’t get any of the money? In that case, why bother?
First it seems like more hassle than its really worth. Beyond replacing the motor this car is due for all fluids to be changed out including brake, coolant, transmission.
Thanks for answering.
Yes if we junk the car and forget about it, it costs the heirs nothing directly. However, we may have additional legal expenses to prove to the state that junking a car originally valued at $4500 plus was appropriate. The thought is that it would be easiest all around to simply do the best we can to maximize the value for the state, easily proving we are acting in good faith. Maybe we can fix the car for $2500 and sell it for $4000+?
An additional complication is that the friend currently has the car 1000 miles away, in Nova Scotia. If we get it repaired up there, friend can drive it back.
Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that. I imagine that would push the total cost of repairs and updated maintenance up over $3000, making it easier to justify writing off the car.
Well, I’d be surprised if you were under a legal obligation to repair the vehicle. You would need to sell it ‘as is’ to the highest bidder. And, just to be clear, when you say ‘state’ you mean the government, not the ‘estate’, correct?
yes - state means the state government. I am sure you are right that we don’t have a legal obligation to repair the car. I think we have an obligation not to throw away state money. If a “reasonable” course, as determined by lawyers, is to repair and resell, then that is probably what we should do. That’s what I’m trying to figure out - what’s a reasonable course.
Since the car is 1000 miles away have you considered giving the purchaser a 2500.00 credit adjustment off the purchase price. Get an estimate for the repair to substantiate for the State what you are doing. If the ultimate sale price of the vehicle is lower than intially reported due to current condition you may be able to take a capital loss on the sale which could flow through to the beneficiaries-talk to your acountant
Another case where the car should have been inspected before a value was assigned/sale completed.
I suspect the car developed a problem and the driver kept driving and increased the damage to the car.
You do leave out details that led to the need for a new engine.
Car was sold as-is,no money back,new owner deals with engine question,end of story.
Since you are concerned about the money, try to get $500 or whatever you can for it. I’m sure it is worth more than that so try for more if you need more but you want the estate to close some day. You don’t want to put money into it. Warranty. All states have rules regarding this. Don’t pay for one. Some states say one year warranty on rebuilt or remanufactured engines. Any warranty is good if you don’t have to pay for it.
I’m a little lost here. You say the money is going to the State. Don’t know why this would happen, unless she owed back taxes. If the money of the sale of the car IS going to the state…then just junk it. It makes no sense spend any money getting it fixed just to sell it and give the money to the state.
Estate is GONE to Medicaid, right? OK, just re-sell the car “as is” for what ever you can get. Put it on E-bay with no reserve and just let it go…
Thanks for all the replies!
The car passed state inspection. I’m guessing the problem became more serious when the car was taken on two long (1000+ mile) trips. The car was losing oil through the catalytic converter (or something like that, I didn’t talk directly to the mechanic) so there was no physical evidence of an oil leak, but it WAS losing oil, so perhaps the real damage was done as oldschool says, after the inspection, on those trips, because buyer didn’t check the oil after getting the pre-trip tuneup. When audible problems began, mechanic found that the oil was down 3 1/2 quarts! I don’t know if state inspection would have found the early signs of engine damage (?) MA state law says if buyer finds a problem within 30 days (they did) and can prove we knew about it, we are liable - it’s not end of story, unfortunately, they could argue that we knew our MIL, were taking care of almost everything for her, but didn’t make sure she was keeping the car maintained. Buyer’s mechanics say “somebody should have known about this”. We don’t want to go to court, and buyer is a friend, so we want to do the right thing, and we hope the buyer does too.
To answer MikeInNH, my wife’s mother was in a nursing home paid for by state health insurance. Everything in my MIL’s name at time of death goes to “escrow” in case anyone had claims against her. The state claimed a dollar amount greater than the total escrow (including the $4500 for the car). If we just junk the car, somebody might ask us why we didn’t try to sell it as is, or repair and resell. Even $1000 would be better than $0. We don’t want to face a legal battle, we just want to do the right thing. BTW, any money we spend repairing it would come out of escrow.
Caddyman has an interesting idea - put it on ebay “as is, no reserve”. That would be easier if the car was here instead of 1000 miles away.
My current plan is to see if the buyer will keep the car if I rebate $3500 (make the purchase price $1000 instead of $4500), and let buyer decide what to do. That has several advantages for both parties, unless buyer is dead set on having that car out of their life. In that event, we will ask our lawyer if we are likely to get in trouble for refunding all buyer’s money and junking the car (too expensive and troublesome to transport the car back here).
Bill
As long as you can demonstrate that the car was junked, there shouldn’t be a problem. The state’s worried about you passing off chunks of the estate and escaping payment. No payment can be due on a junked car. (not that I’m a lawyer).
Just curious,MA has regulations for private party vehicle sales?
So, your friend bought a used car, drove it 2,000 miles before the engine blew up and you think they deserve a full refund?!? I’m sorry, I don’t follow this logic at all. I especially wonder if your friend checked the oil level occasionally.
I can’t imagine anyone thinking your friend ought to get his/her money back. Maybe I’m seeing this wrong. I’m sure you want to keep your friendship, but I’d pay very close attention to what your lawyer tells you on this.
yes MA has a Lemon Law which I have read.
The LemonAid law doesn’t apply because the car passed inspection.
The part of the Lemon Law that applies is this: if buyer finds a problem that significantly affects safety or usability of vehicle within 30 days and can prove previous owner knew about it but did not disclose, then they can legally demand a full refund. I don’t know if our buyer can prove that or not. Perhaps we “should have known” my MIL was not taking care of her car, though we certainly did not intentionally hide info from my friend.
My friend could choose to fight under the MA Lemon Law, which would cost us both lawyer fees and probably cost the friendship. My friend will probably NOT choose to fight, but she is of limited means and I want to do the right thing. There are clearly no good options, it’s a bad situation all around. Remember, even if we give her all the money back and junk the car, there’s zero money out of our pockets - it all comes out of escrow that will be going 100% to the estate lawyer and state health insurance.
So my real question to the car experts here is: if we have the engine rebuilt/replaced, would any buyer seriously consider paying us enough to recoup our expenses? I doubt I have given enough info for anyone to really answer that, but perhaps a gut reaction will push me over the edge at this point.
Thanks, this is a practical suggestion, assuming buyer is willing to keep the car. We’ll definitely need some pro advice on this one!
Thankfully MA has great laws for private sales. Basically 7 days within purchase you must bring it to a required emissions/safety testing. If it fails and repairs exceed 10% of purchase price you can demand and get your full money back.
This is both private and dealer sales.