Business Ethics: Taking Possession in Jewish Monetary Law - Rabbi Shlomo Cohen

[Music] [Applause] welcome back to another Shu in our little series on Jewish monetary law in the past few shim we've been talking about Kim and Acquisitions and I want to add on another story to tell to tell you another story a case that actually happened to emphasize size until now we've spoken about a thought we've spoken about a verbal obligation we've spoken about the custom I want to speak to you now about where there's actually been a change of ownership in real estate in buying and selling of real estate once you pay for the real estate even if it's just a partial payment it could be that there's now been a change of ownership but generally when buying and selling real estate any buyer wants to know that he has a contract in his hands he wants to have something written down in his name to prove that he's the owner of this property the fact that he may have paid a few million to buy the property is not good enough for him he is only satisfied with the deal once it's going to be written down in his name that's something that we today are very very particular about when we're dealing in real estate I'm not talking about the contracts that we write up with a lawyer the contracts you write up with a lawyer if you read what's written in them they're a promis to buy they're not the actual acquisition they're not a proof that the property is yours I'm talking about the legal signing up of the property in your name which usually happens at the end of the deal after all the money has already been paid and it can be even after only after the new the new buyer has actually moved into the property when the property is actually signed down in the name of the new buyer only from that point in time is the buyer actually satisfied that the that the that the the acquisition is over and so therefore the H has to take account of this and even though normally you would the normal principle would be that when you paid money over the deal is complete nevertheless in the sale of real estate we say that the deal is not complete until the property is registered officially and legally in the name of the new buyer this would make a tremendous difference let's say that there low Lan there was an earthquake and the house was destroyed between the first payment and the registering of the of the of the of the property in the name of the new buyer whose loss is it who's loss the buyer or the seller if there's a burst pipes which can cost thousands to fix who on Whose responsibility is it to fix it in the time which can be a matter of a few months between the first payment and the actual transfer of ownership at the end even though the is that in a place where everyone is particular to have the the property registered in the name of the buyer only then is there a transfer of ownership nevertheless if the buy the seller were to allow the buyer to move in to actually move in and start changing the locks and doing improvements to the property from that point in time we say that the deal is complete on he once he's allowed the buyer to do what's called a Kenyan kazok to start doing improvements and changing the locks to the property we see we can see from the actions of the seller that he has actually agreed now for there to be a transfer of ownership any outstanding money is now a debt has to be paid definitely has to be paid and if it's not paid it can cancel the whole deal but it's a debt the property actually now belongs to the buyer from the moment that he's been allowed to move in this is a reason why people should be careful when selling real estate that if you haven't been paid all the money yet don't let the guy move in because by letting him move in you finished the transaction in some ways and you have to think carefully if that's what you actually want to happen let me tell you this a story there was a guy that lived on the top floor of an apartment building here in Jerusalem and he wanted to build on an extra floor an extra floor to his apartment at the time the the the law was that only the person living on the top floor was allowed to add on an extra apartment an extra building no one else would be allowed to and of course he had to get the agreement of everyone now the shell of any building actually belongs legally to all the people that live in the building right doesn't belong just to the person that lives on the roof so he is actually by building on the roof going to be taking the property of the guys that live downstairs the guys that live downstairs were asked how much you want do you want you need to be paid there was a claim made here there's often if this claim often comes up there's a of what's called mid everyone's heard of the people of sudom and Amur that were destroyed by Hashem because of their immoral Behavior one of the things that they used to do there in zom was that they wouldn't help anyone else out someone else needed help they wouldn't give him any help they had they had their own hasher they had their own way of looking on the world they said if Hashem made you poor so he meant you to be poor I'm going to get involved in changing the creation the way Hashem created the world and help you out and give you money money I'm not going to do that I'm not going to get involved it's not my business Hashem if Hashem wanted you to be rich he would have given you money why should I he made me Rich because he wants me to have money so I'm not going to give my money to you that's changing the way Hashem created the world if you're ill and I'm healthy I'm not going to help you Hashem wants you to be ill that's that's the way he wants things to be that was the hash that was the way that the people in sudom looked on the world and so therefore in a case where someone can benefit and you're not going to lose out anything by allowing them to benefit the is that that's mid if you don't allow them to benefit if you don't allow them to benefit in such a way that means any case where my friend can benefit and I'm not going to lose out on anything by allowing him to benefit and I can somehow stop him from benefiting I am obligated to do whatever I can to make sure that he's going to benefit let me put translate this straight away into uh a real situation like you live in an apartment block and you have a parking space in your name private parking space it's your property but you lost your license they took away your license they caught you talking on your cell phone while you were driving they've taken away your license for a few months and in the meantime you've sold your car so you're not using your parking space your neighbor his son has just taken out a driving license and he's just got a new car and he says listen do you mind if I park my car in your parking space until you get your new car until you get your license back if you are intending to rent out your parking space then gun height you can rent it out that's your prerogative no one can tell you not to and earn as much money as you can from that that's fine but if you're not planning on renting it out you're planning on just leaving it empty and this guy can benefit from parking his car there so is it considered as midat on your behalf not to allow him to park there for free that's the question of midat right it's not there's not a clear answer right now I'm not giving a clear answer to whether there is midat Sadam in such a situation or there is right that's a whole separate Shear that maybe we'll do one day but the question can arise and the question arose in this case of this guy that's building on the roof he said to his neighbors why I'm supposed to pay you for building on the roof you have no use for the roof you've know there's nothing you can do with the you with the roof so why should I have to pay you for it it's midat it's like behaving like the people of sdam for you to ask money from me for building on the roof because there's nothing you can do with the roof anyway so why should I have to pay you the answer is that according to all opinions when we talk about mid at sdon we'll see that there are different opinions about when it applies and when it doesn't apply but according to all opinions where I'm going to come and take away your property forever and make it mine by building on this roof that belongs to you even though you have absolutely no use for it right now that has absolutely nothing to do with M you can't take away someone else's problem property even if they're not using it that's not connected to Mid so therefore it's clear that someone who's building on the roof has to pay he has to pay for the for the for the part of the roof that he's going to take to the others neighbors but not necessarily sometimes the other neighbors won't take money from him they say it's all right we don't need money we don't need to pay us in this particular block there was a guy there who at first when he realized that he can get some money for it thought he's going to now make a million out of this going to be able to marry off his children by selling his share of the roof until he realized that it's not really worth very much even though he is going to get paid he's not going to get paid very much because how much is it worth how much is it worth to him we're not talking about how much it's worth to the other guy to the other guy it's worth a lot of money but he doesn't have to that's not the value of something because you can extort someone and get out of a high a high price from them that doesn't change the value of of of of goods okay so this guy um went to take advice how am I going to how am I going to uh how much can I get for the roof and he was told you can't get much for it CU he don't have any use for it he went off and bought a whole load of chickens and set them loose on the roof and said now in you see the roof is my farm and therefore it's worth a lot of money now when they sent people up to check the it turned out that these these chickens were were more were more righteous than he was and they all committed suicide and jumped off the roof so none of them were there so he couldn't didn't have a claim that he could claim that he's using the roof as a farm anyway this particular guy afterwards decided that he's not going to take money it's a small amount of money anyway it's beneath his uh his cavod to charge for it and so he's not going to charge the guy that was building on the roof said fine called in the workers there was only a verbal agreement between the two of them right and then he called in the workers and they started building as soon as he saw the workers coming in and he saw that things are really serious and really happening he suddenly changed his mind and he phoned up the guy that's building on the roof and he said to him listen I do want money for building on the roof I do want to charge you the normal price that are valuable tell me that the the roof is worth and the guy that's building there said I'm sorry it's too late I've already started building so what have you already started building the roof is mine it's my share no you this guy agreed that he's going to give the roof over as a gift he's not going to demand a payment for it at that time when he made that promise he can go back on it he'll be considered as M for going back on it he'll be considered as an unreliable person like we said in the first sheer in this series for going back on his word but we can't stop him from doing it but in this case more than that has been done because the guy that you told to you're going to give this property to has actually already started building as soon as he started building finished that's the end that's the contractual act that makes the transfer of ownership and so the roof already has been given over to him after you've given to a gift to someone everyone knows that even if you fight with the guy the next day you can't take the gift give back right maybe kids in first grade don't yet understand that but anyone after after first grade already realizes that when you give a gift to someone even if you fight with them afterwards you can't take it back a gift has been given and it's therefore the same in our case the roof the rights of this guy's rights to the roof he agreed to give them over the guy the the the receiver of the gift has already made the contractual act by starting to build and the deal is now over and finished and it's too late for this guy to go back on the deal and say now that he wants money and that's exactly the same in any deal of real estate that once Hoka has been given over once possession has been given over to one of the parties then that closes the deal even if all the money hasn't yet been paid and the money that's outstanding will be a debt thank [Music] you