Let’s say the parents either despise the kid or feel the best “tough love” is to kick them out of the house the instant they turn 18.
Can they kick them out at the stroke of midnight on the 18th birthday, or do they have to serve some sort of “eviction notice” and give them time?
AFAIK and IANAL, you can’t really ever just kick someone out of the home they’ve been living in. You have to have them evicted, which can take at least 30 days unless they’ve been committing a crime, in which case you can give them 24 or 48 hours notice to evict.
Hmm, that seems like some interesting legal theory. Parents of older teenagers kick them out all the time. I have never heard of any legal challenges to it even on these boards from the kids. Some of them are drug users and have conditions on which they can stay. If they use, they are out and some people follow through with the threat. If the kid isn’t paying rent and is over 18, I don’t see the problem. That is but one example. I have known lots of people that freeloaded off of relatives and got kicked out for misbehavior no matter how old they are. It seems reasonable to me.
Also, what about moving house and just not inviting them along? Is that different?
That is an interesting legal theory at least for the US. Most eviction statutes are based on contract law not some nebulous regard for where someone has lived.
In any city I’ve lived in, lock-out evictions are not legal, and if the lockee calls the police, the homeowner will be forced to let the other person back in. They will be advised to have the person legally evicted. The length of time until a guest is considered a tenant apparently varies from state to state, but when I lived in South Carolina, if someone even spent one night in your home, and didn’t want to leave, you had to legally evict them. Sounds pretty crazy, but the police aren’t going to get involved in this sort of domestic matter- it’s civil.
That does sound crazy if not outright bizarre. I am positive that it isn’t true for all states (like my home state of Louisiana which has a different legal system and probably not for many more states). I hardly ever asked for cites but do you have any evidence for this claim? If I allow a friend to stay over at my house for the night and he simply refuses to leave and becomes a squatter, I would hope that I could just call the police and have him or her kicked out. If the person steps outside, can’t I just lock them out, refuse them re-entry? It is my house after all and I have young children.
I think you need to provide some more evidence for this claim. I have never heard of it and the complications it could cause make my mind spin. In short, I don’t believe it at all and I certainly hope that it isn’t true in any place in the U.S.
Just because cops are not willing to get involved in a legal squable on the street does not mean any legal theory gives freeloaders a right to stay. Cops are not in a position to review legal documents like deeds or leases to determine who has the right to evict whom. But if the person leaves and you throw all their stuff on the street and change the locks and prevent them from entering the cops certainly are not going to make you let them in. But you are right to the extent you want a court order for someone to leave you do have to go through the legal steps and that does take time. But that is not because they have a right to stay but rather because you can’t just walk up to a judge and say here is my deed order him out. The judge is going to want to hear both sides of the story. But if you physically evict someone with a lease without complying with the legal process they can recover damages but a freeloader cannot.
I know that at first glance it seems crazy that you, the homeowner, can’t just one day kick your housemates to the curb, family or non-related roommates. But you can’t. People have a constitutional right to due process. I went through several pages of google search for cites, and can really only find citeless message board answers like this, thisand this, and this, but I know from real life experience that people that have been living somewhere can not just be put out. I don’t know why I can’t find any legitimate cites, but I guess it’s a state issue.
Sure, you could take the chance that the adult child won’t know they have this right, and will just go away, but if they call the police, the police will make you let them back in- the very reason is because of course they’re not going to go through a bunch of domestic “she did this” and “he did that” squabbling bullshit. A court order for eviction is clear-cut and obviously legal, and they will enforce that. Could you imagine what if people were allowed to put their housemates out on the street on a whim? Nope, you can’t self-evict, if someone has been living there a certain amount of time. I don’t know if SC law has changed- this was about 15 years ago that my apartment manager told me of the law there, with the one-night thing.
Alice, the constitution does not apply to private individuals.
I do.
This is probably going to degenerate into a bunch of state based legal trivia but, in my home state of Louisiana, you can just order the person out and then shoot to kill if they don’t comply especially if they aren’t related and are harassing either people or property. There is case law on this and it is well documented both here and in the media and it has played out to deadly consequences in real life. Other states do not have such a liberal interpretation of home invasion but, even in Massachusetts, I have never heard of anything like this. States obviously vary a lot but I cannot imagine say, a Texas coworker, telling me over the phone that she is having trouble hearing a conference call because a cousin came into town last night, refuses to leave, and is snoring next to her desk and she can’t do anything about it until the courts order it. It doesn’t make sense.
And if a court denies to evict? That does sound awfully strange. I can understand a landlord/renter situation, but kicking out your kids or a bum of a friend? That should fly.
My limited experience in Florida was if that the person had been living there long enough for it to be considered their primary residence, the owner of the house better NOT just kick em out without legal notification and “due process”, lest the kicker get into big trouble from the kickie.
Actually they don’t. The fifth and fourteenth amendments provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; and this only applies to the government unless US Statute 1983 can somehow be invoked. But even if it applied to private persons it still would not apply here. If the person has no right to reside in your home then kicking them out is not depriving them of life liberty or property.
(For you legal scholars, if you bring up adverse possession I will force you to recite the rule against perpetuities and give three examples where it does apply while hanging naked by your feet over a pit of horny starving gorillas…)
OP asked about a minor being kicked out of their primary residence at the stroke of midnight on their 18th birthday. I am not certain of the relevance of this.
Also, my reading of Louisana Code of Civil Procedure Section 4702 seems to imply any occupant who is not bound by a lease must be served with a notice to vacate, and given at least 5 days to vacate the property.
Cite?
I think you are reading it wrong. A person who rents month to month may not have a lease but that statute would protect them. However I doubt it applies to a house guest who decides he doesn’t want to leave.
Considering the title of the section is “Notice to occupant other than tenant to vacate,” I’m going to go with my original reading.
Too late to edit, but Section 4704 of the same code defines “occupant” as the following:
Bolding is mine.
I’m gonna guess that it applies to someone the tenant has let live there that the landlord wants out. Not someone who is a guest in your own home.
A parent may have an obligation to provide for the comfort and care of a child but there is no obligation to allow them in your home. Notice all the boarding schools and military schools? Once the child turns eighteen you are not obligated by law to provide anything and they essentially become a guest in your home.
Per cite. This one isn’t hard. There is case law on this and we have talked about it here many times before. A Japanese exchange student, Yoshihiro Hattori, was shot dead in Baton Rouge in 1992 by a homeowner when he went to the wrong address for a Halloween party and refused to comply with the order to leave. Louisiana law allows lethal defense for protection of both people and property. There was a language barrier and the event was extremely unfortunate but the homeowner was still acquitted. It was an international media case but the law still found in favor of the homeowner.
The owner of the small supermarket chain where I worked in high-school in the late 1980’s even before that walked in to his house to find his wife sleeping with another man (in all senses). A fight ensued and he ordered him to leave. It didn’t work out cleanly and the man was shot and killed. I don’t even think it ever went to trial because it was so cut and dried because it took place in his own home and the man refused to leave. I had a (male) babysitter kill someone on his own property for not as clear cut reasons but it never went to trial. I still liked him although I though his judgment could have been better. You don’t want to screw around with orders to leave a property Louisiana. It doesn’t have the same legal system as the rest of the states so I doubt this thread would fly at all there.
The states are wildly different when it comes to these matters.