What happens if the non-Jew who the chametz was sold to on Pesach dies?
If he has a will, then the chametz would be passed on to someone else, and we could try to buy it back from him. However, if he has no will, then the decision about who owns the chametz could be tied up in courts for quite some time, far beyond the end of Pesach, and we would have no one to buy it back from.
Presumably this issue could be avoided by adding a clause to the contract specifying who the ownership of the chametz passes to if the current owner dies.
Is this a common practice in the contracts Rabbis use today? If not, why isn't it, and as per above, if he dies without a will what happens? Do we just not get to buy back our chametz? Hasn't anyone else thought about this issue?
