Question:

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Ken:

    How to you handle situations when a divorce happens and both names are on the monitoring contract and one is trying to remove the other one from the system?

Kevin Leonard, A.Sc. T., President & CEO

Huronia Alarm & Fire Security Inc.

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Question:

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Ken,

    With regards to authorized signatures, in New Jersey,  a husband signs your monitoring agreement and passes away a year later.  If wife remarries and a new last name is associated with the account, does the wife need to sign another agreement or is the contract still enforceable?

Randy-Scott Liljeros

Director of Operations

Securall Monitoring Corp

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ANSWER:

    These related questions focus on the issue of who should be signing your alarm contracts; who is your subscriber; what obligation do you have to others in the residence? 

    The best practice is to have both husband and wife sign the alarm contract.  Sure, every adult in the home should sign, but that's not practical and you don't necessarily know if other adults are in the house and they aren't likely to be the one sending you a check or providing a credit card.  If they are then get them to sign the contract.

    So husband and wife sign the contract.  They get into a matrimonial dispute and you get calls telling you to change the code and not let the spouse know.  You are also requested to respond as if it's a break in if the spouse without the code enters and sets off the alarm. 

    Don't get in the middle.  Where both spouses have signed the alarm contract you should not take sides.  Your best response in this situation is to let them know that you will comply with a Court Order regarding the right to occupy the residence and you will also comply with a stipulation between the spouses.  Absent that you should not change the code or treat either of them as an intruder. 

    In the event of a remarriage and name change it is not necessary to get another contract signed.  However, it would be a good idea to get the new spouse to sign a new contract or assume the old contract.  This is especially sound advice if you get checks from the new spouse.  Keep in mind that if you get a check with both spouses, names on the check then the check is from both of them even if only one signs the check. 

    Although my Standard Contracts provide that your duty runs only to the subscriber who signed the contract and that there are no intended beneficiaries, that argument is a hard sell to a judge when it's a residence and you're claiming you may have owed a duty to one spouse but not another.

     In a case just decided in Federal Court in New York [which I will be highlighting later this month] a US District Court judge held a husband who was present when the contract was signed by his wife, who resided in the house, and who benefited from the alarm services, was in fact a third party beneficiary of the alarm services, and as a third party beneficiary he was subject to the terms of the alarm contract.  In this case the Judge enforced a shortened statute of limitation period and dismissed an action that had been started after one year of the event.  The case will be posted under Leading Cases under NY cases at http://www.kirschenbaumesq.com/casesbystate.htm