Background
In June 2023, Gerald D. Hall entered into a home improvement agreement with Home Depot for the purchase and installation of a gas furnace. Right Now Heating, Cooling & Plumbing, LLC — doing business as Trademark Mechanical — was identified in the agreement as the independent contractor service provider that would perform the installation. Critically, the agreement required Hall to pay Home Depot directly and expressly prohibited Hall from making payment to the service provider. Hall telephoned Right Now to explain a payment delay, and Right Now sent two payment-demand letters to his physical address on July 13 and July 17, 2023. Hall died on July 19, 2023.
Hall’s daughter, Leala Waldo, opened probate, was appointed personal representative (PR) of the Estate, and published notice to creditors in a local newspaper on August 24, 2023. She reviewed Hall’s mail (forwarded to her out-of-state address), contacted credit card companies, utility providers, and his cell phone carrier, and sent notice to creditors — including Home Depot Credit Services — based on documents discovered in his records. She did not check Hall’s physical mailbox because he had not received mail there for years. She declared she had no knowledge of any claim by Right Now or Trademark Mechanical and was unaware of the furnace agreement until Right Now submitted its claim.
Eight months after the first publication of notice — well past the four-month deadline applicable to non-ascertainable creditors but within the 24-month window available to reasonably ascertainable creditors — Right Now submitted a creditor’s claim to the Estate for the full contract price of $19,335.85. The PR rejected the claim as untimely. Right Now then filed suit alleging breach of contract and unjust enrichment. The trial court granted summary judgment in Right Now’s favor on both claims, awarded the contract amount, and added costs, attorney fees, and pre- and post-judgment interest. The Estate appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Washington Court of Appeals, Division Three, reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of Right Now and reversed the denial of the Estate’s cross-motion for summary judgment, remanding with instructions to enter judgment in favor of the Estate. The court held that the undisputed evidence established that the PR conducted a reasonable review of the decedent’s correspondence and financial records under RCW 11.40.040(1), triggering the statutory presumptions that she exercised reasonable diligence and that any unascertained creditor was not reasonably ascertainable. Because Right Now’s claims were not discoverable through that review — the furnace agreement named Hall and Home Depot as contracting parties and explicitly barred direct payment to the service provider — neither the agreement nor any other document in Hall’s records would have alerted the PR to a potential claim by Right Now.
The court further held that Right Now failed to overcome the presumption of non-ascertainability by clear, cogent, and convincing evidence. Right Now’s only contact efforts — two letters sent to the physical address days before Hall’s death, and prior phone calls with Hall — were insufficient. The letters were never confirmed received by the PR, Right Now did not follow up when it received no response, and phone calls with the decedent could not put the PR on notice. The court noted that a service provider in Right Now’s position could have filed a mechanic’s lien notice under chapter 60.04 RCW, which would have provided documented, property-encumbering notice; Right Now did not do so. Because Right Now was not a reasonably ascertainable creditor, its claim was governed by the four-month publication deadline, making its eight-month-late submission untimely.
The court also noted, as an additional ground, that the trial court erred in granting summary judgment on both breach of contract and unjust enrichment simultaneously, because under Washington law those claims cannot coexist on the same set of facts.
Key Takeaways
- A personal representative who reviews the decedent’s correspondence, financial records, and discovered contracts satisfies the “reasonable diligence” standard under RCW 11.40.040(1), even if she does not check a physical mailbox that the decedent had not used for years.
- A subcontractor that has no direct contract with a homeowner — and whose potential claim is not reflected in the decedent’s records — is presumptively not a “reasonably ascertainable creditor” under RCW 11.40.040(2) and must file its estate claim within four months of first publication of notice, not the 24-month window available to ascertainable creditors.
- To rebut the non-ascertainability presumption, a creditor must provide clear, cogent, and convincing evidence; two unacknowledged demand letters mailed shortly before the debtor’s death, without any certified mail, personal delivery, or mechanic’s lien filing, does not meet that standard.
- Washington law bars simultaneous recovery on breach of contract and unjust enrichment claims arising from the same facts; trial courts may not enter judgment on both theories at once.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies the interplay between Washington’s probate creditor-claim deadlines and the “reasonably ascertainable creditor” framework for subcontractors and service providers who perform work under three-party home improvement arrangements. Where a homeowner contracts with a general contractor or retailer and a subcontractor performs the actual work, the subcontractor has no direct contractual relationship with the homeowner — and the homeowner’s estate may have no way to know a claim exists. Attorneys representing estates should take note that a thorough but focused document review, calibrated to the decedent’s actual practices, can satisfy the reasonable-diligence standard and extinguish late-filed claims.
For trade contractors and service providers, the ruling is a practical warning: relying on informal phone calls and ordinary mail to a property address is not enough to preserve estate creditor status. Securing a mechanic’s lien or sending notice by certified mail or personal delivery before or promptly after a customer’s death significantly strengthens the argument that the estate was on constructive notice of the claim and that the 24-month window applies.