A family of four had fallen off the radar of a management association at an apartment building in Tokyo.

But a frantic search ensued after a man--a son in the family--died alone in one of the condominiums.

At first, the management association believed this was another “solitary death” requiring contact with bereaved family members to sort out inheritance issues.

The association thought the task to start the inheritance process would be easy because the man’s parents lived in the same building.

However, the parents and the couple’s other son could not be found. Complicating matters was the fact that the dead man’s father was a foreign national, raising a number of cross-border legal barriers in the search.

SON DIES OF ILLNESS

In February 2021, a resident of the 50-year-old apartment building contacted the management association to report “a strange odor coming from an adjoining room.”

The association called police, who found the body of the family’s son in his 50s inside the unit.

He had been dead for about two months, and police judged that he died from an illness. Foul play was ruled out.

Records show that the family--father, mother and two sons--moved into the condominium building when it was constructed half a century ago. The dead man was the second son.

A 76-year-old woman who chairs the management association remembers the father. She used to leave home to commute to work around the same time as the father, and they often chatted as they walked to the station.

The father wore a hunting cap and crisp business suits. She got the impression that he was a cheerful man who smiled and laughed easily.

He told her that he was a foreign national and worked at the embassy of his country of origin.

However, she did not know anything about his family members.

She said she had not seen the father since she retired from work about 15 years ago.

For solitary deaths in condominiums, management associations usually first call the deceased person’s “emergency contact” listed on the documents when they move in.

The dead man had named his father, who would be in his 90s by now, as the emergency contact.

At the time, the parents were six months in arrears on maintenance fees and other charges, and the association had lost contact with them.

In the presence of police, management association staff opened the door of the parents’ room and found pills on the table and clothes left in the closet. But there were no signs that anyone was still living there.

The association also found the father had named his now-dead second son as the emergency contact.

FINANCIAL HEADACHE

The management association had no authority to clean up and empty the dead son’s apartment. It first needed to find heirs entitled to the property, and the search started with the missing parents.

The association wanted to quickly wrap up the issue with the two uninhabited condominiums.

If the two rooms remained vacant, both units would continue to be in arrears on maintenance fees--about 20,000 yen ($130) per month--and reserve funds for repairs.

If heirs could be found, the management association could claim the delinquent amount. The statute of limitations for such cases expires after five years.

“We can’t afford to just let this continue,” a management association official said.

Its board members talked to other residents in the building and gathered bits and pieces of the family members’ lives.

CLUE FOUND IN MAIL

According to the information obtained, the deceased second son was mentally disabled and apparently on welfare.

The mother took care of the father after he had become nearly bedridden. But about five years ago, she also became ill and entered a care facility.

The father went to a nearby nursing home at an unknown date and later moved to another elderly care facility.

When the mother died, the second son and a friend held a funeral for her.

However, the association could find no further information about the father or the first son.

Board members visited the ward welfare office and the nursing home where the father had originally stayed, but they hit a brick wall in trying to find information because of “privacy concerns.”

Desperate, the board members reluctantly looked for clues in the overstuffed mailboxes of the empty apartments.

Amid utility bills and direct-mail advertisements, they found a “reminder of payment” letter from a cemetery, and they called the phone number on the envelope.

The maintenance fees, overdue for several years, were for the grave of the family’s first son. The association learned that he had died in his teens decades ago.

That left only the father possibly alive.

The company that manages the condominium building did its own investigation, and it later told the management association that the father “had died at a facility outside of Tokyo.”

FEW OPTIONS

Presuming that all immediate family members were dead, the association asked the company’s lawyer to investigate if there were other heirs for the properties.

But the lawyer turned down the request.

Normally, such an investigation would involve the lawyer checking the family’s registry. But since the father was not Japanese, he was not listed in Japan. And the father’s country of origin has strict rules against releasing personal information from its registers.

The association contacted the ward office’s free legal advice service, but answers remained elusive.

A nonprofit organization in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward that provides consultations on condominium management referred the association to a judicial scrivener’s office that specializes in inheritance issues for foreign nationals.

The office advised the association to ask a family court to appoint an inherited property administrator, who examines a deceased person’s assets, including debts, and makes arrangements for sales or liquidation if there are no heirs.

The association’s board of directors agreed to take the recommended step, even though it would be costly to get the judicial scrivener’s office to formally complete the procedure.

By that time, it was March 2022, more than a year since the second son was found dead.

COMPLICATED PAPERWORK

It was not easy for the board members to prepare the necessary documents for the application and prove the absence of heirs for the two properties.

They split up and visited legal affairs bureaus and ward offices to request certified copies of real estate registries and certificates of residence, among other documents.

In autumn 2022, the association sent a prepayment of 1 million yen to a family court, and a lawyer was appointed as an inherited property administrator in this case.

The appointed administrator tried to obtain information about the father, including through his alien registration card from the immigration bureau.

In May 2023, the father’s apartment was sold, and the second son’s room was sold in October the year.

The unpaid maintenance fees and other costs totaling more than 1 million yen for the two rooms were collected after they were sold.

It remains to be seen whether the 1 million yen prepayment can be recovered, and how much the judicial scrivener’s office will charge.

However, the chair of the management association said, “I am relieved that the delinquency of maintenance fees and other payments has ended.”

UPDATE EMERGENCY CONTACT

The chair said another lesson was learned from the case: “In the event of an emergency, we would be in trouble if residents do not list a contact person who knows what’s going on.”

The management association has asked residents to update their emergency contact information, but many do not.

Some residents are unmarried, and the number of foreign residents is also increasing, the chair said.

Shuhei Yoshida, a lawyer who serves as vice chair of the Japanese Inheritance Association, said it often takes more than three months, even for a specialist, to examine all family registers from the birth to the death of an individual, regardless of nationality.

He advises residents to “make a will and decide how to handle property after death.” He also urges management associations to communicate these matters to residents.

“It would also be a good idea to visit elderly residents who live alone once a year to ask how they are doing,” he said.