I think that her parents are probably the people you should deal with, after getting local advice. Do they know about her plan to move in with her boyfriend? Do they subsidize her at all?
It sounds to me like this has already soured your relationship to the point where you probably don’t want to live together anyway; what about asking her to stay just until you find a replacement roomie?
I had the opposite problem happen to me when I was in college. There were four of us living in a three-bedroom apartment, and after nearly a year, it was feeling pretty crowded. I let my roommates know that I would be moving out when the lease was up, and why. Then one of my roommates (who was also really annoying and part of the reason I was moving out) said that she was planning on moving in with some different friends, so I said, in that case, I’d stay. A couple weeks before we had to renew the lease for another year, I hadn’t heard her say anything about her new place in a while, so I asked her about it. “Oh,” she said lightly, “I decided not to move out after all.” Well, gee, do you think you could have MENTIONED THIS at some point?!? Fortunately, I was able to quickly find a good apartment and let my old landlord know that I wouldn’t be renewing my part of the lease.
Man, what is it about UCF and roomies?? My daughter and her best-friend-since-kindergarten roomed together down there. Then best-friend got a boyfriend who moved in. Then one thing led to another, and my daughter is now living alone again. Frankly, it’s worth it to me to subsidize her rent to keep her out of that mess.
Good luck with your whacko-roomie. Some day, you’ll look back on this and laugh. Maybe.
First of all, just a little ignorance fighting here; animal allergies aren’t related to the fur, but to a protein found in the dander and saliva. When microscopic particles of this protein become airborne, symptoms will occur.
Stop guessing and assuming and planning on researching and pull the lease out and read it! See exactly what it says about subletting and your rights and responsibilities should she leave you holding the bag. Contact Student Legal Services. [They’re] located in the Ferrell Commons, Room 155 right across from the counseling and Testing center, and open Monday - Friday from 8am - 5pm. You can call them at 407-823-2538, or email them at stulegal@mail.ucf.edu. They can and will help you. The very first bullet point on their “What We Do” page says:
It’s all fine and good to rant and release your frustration here. But be very careful what kind of legal repercussions you threaten her with, because you may very well turn out to be wrong. If she moves out, doesn’t find you a new roommate and doesn’t pay her share of the rent, you might think you can get away with holding her liable for her half of the rent for the full term of the lease, but you might very well be wrong. It’s possible that in your jurisdiction you might be legally bound to mitigate your damages by finding a new roommate as soon as possible, even if that means letting her off the hook. It sucks that she may not end up having to suffer the consequences of her bad act, but don’t go off half-cocked threatening legal action that could end up biting you in the ass in the long run.
Good luck! I hope you can get rid of this twit with a minimal of headache and heartache.
Calm down, peeps. Roomie is a flighty air head and will probably change her mind again or never get up the gumption to actually pack her crap and move in the first place. Before you get in her face, call the 'rents and get all legal on her which will just make the situation worse, make sure that she actually intends to follow through which is doubtful.
I’d just inform her calmly that she whether she lives there or not she is responsible for the rent. Don’t even bother to argue with her about cats and dishes in the sink. It deflects from the main issue.
“The cat bothers me”…“That’s irrelevant, you are still responsible for half of the rent.”
“You are a bad influence.”…“That’s irrelevant, you are still responsible for half of the rent.”
“But I’m in looooove.”…“That’s irrelevant…”
Since you say she claims she doesn’t remember things people tell here when it’s inconvenient, you might want to give it to her in writing, and copy someone else, like maybe your landlord, on the letter; that way she can’t claim she didn’t know she’s liable for her share of the lease. A letter with confirmation of receipt – make her sign for it – almost always trumps an oral “Nobody told me!”
And I fourteenth the instructions to go talk to student legal services ASAP! Good luck; she sounds like a total flake.
My question to you is, do you want to continue living at the current residence, even at the price of $1200 per month (and possibly whatever additional utilities you will have to pay for because you are not splitting those bills any more–but that may be included in your rent.)?
If the answer is no, then you need to start looking for another place ASAP if you really do not wish to live with someone you don’t know (although lifelong friends can be made that way, it is a risk you end up with a loser.) If you’re okay finding a replacement roommate, you probably have other options.
First, I suggest you do talk to your land lord. My brother owns a property management company, so I’m somewhat anectdotally familiar with situations like this. In general most land lords have you sign a joint and several lease, meaning that the tenants who have signed their name to the lease are going to be responsible for X amount of rent each month.
In general, most of his multi-bedroom units he receives checks each month in equal amounts from each tenant. Legally speaking, however, tenant A isn’t responsible for $600 in rent, nor is tenant B, tenant A+B are responsible for $1200 in rent.
When he has cases of one tenant breaking a lease, he will typically keep that tenant’s deposit, tell the other tenant to begin looking for a new roommate, and then he will also place advertisements for a bedroom in a 2 bedroom apartment.
Not every land lord will assist you in this way, my brother does it because he knows most people who live in a 2-bedroom split rent, and one tenant usually cannot afford to pay the entire monthly rent, he knows it is highly difficult to get blood from a stone, and it is in his interests to get another paying tenant in that spot ASAP.
In the meantime he will put pressure on the tenant who is moving out to continue paying rent, sometimes they agree to do so until a new tenant is found, sometimes they don’t. He’ll use the deposit as a bargaining tool in this, making the general offer that if the tenant who is moving out continues to pay rent until they find a replacement, he will refund them their deposit when a new tenant moves in.
If it’s a situation where a lease has been broken by a tenant 1-2 months in a 12 month lease, and he can’t quickly find a new tenant, he will usually offer to move the remaining tenant into a 1 bedroom unit, and will at that point draw up a new lease and etc for the remaining tenant, confiscate the tenant who moved out’s deposit, and also typically work through a collection’s agency to get the rent that the tenant who moved out is legally liable for (in general if you break a lease you do not become liable for all 12 months of the lease, but most states make you liable for some period of rent, and you are always liable for back-rent.)
You are an undergrad student with no job and you can swing $1200 rent if you have to?
Please tell me how you do that, because I would really like to get in on that.
I’m gonna fifteenth the “go talk to Student Legal Services or even an actual lawyer.” Figure out the exact wording of the lease, and exactly who’s responsible. Most of the advice in here suggests that she’s responsible for $600 per month until you’ve approved a new tenant, and if that’s the case, just let your roommate know that you’re fine with her moving out, but she’s responsible for the rent on the lease she signed, period. Talk to your landlord, too, since he’s going to wind up intricately involved here at some point, and it’s best if he hears it first from you, especially if roomie’s likely to distort facts.
The Weird One, this has soured the relationship, but we haven’t actually had a knock-down, drag-out fight about this. I’ve tried to be firm, but level headed when talking to her. If it stays like that, and she drops this, I could still live with her. How? Well, we aren’t home a lot at the same time, I know she won’t steal from me, she doesn’t have shady people over, so really I think I could deal with tension.
Shayna, I honestly don’t know all that much about allergies, I knew dander had something to do with it, but thanks for teaching me something. And to clarify, normally I wouldn’t doubt any sort of illness, it just seems very suspect to me that her allergies started acting up right after her boyfriend and their friends came up with this plan. I did read the lease, thouroughly, and it said nothing forbidding subleases. In fact, it said nothing about subleases at all, just that “Renter” is responsible for payment of rent the first of every month. Thanks for doing that research for me about the school law office, I will be going there tomorrow after a job interview that I have. And I’m not threatening her, or using a threatening tone at all. Those are mainly things I’m saying in my head, at least until I speak with legal counsel. I’m just stating to her that she is part of a legal document, in case she’s forgotten.
As for her parents, her mother would most likely be fine with this, as she loves the boyfriend. Her father would not like it, but she’s not concerned with his opinion. Her parents do like me, so that’s one point on my side. I’m holding off on that part of it until I have no other option, because things will definitely escalate around here after I make that move.
Martin Hyde, I like this complex, and if there are no other options, I will deal with having a roommate I don’t know. It may take until the end of this semester, but I should be able to find someone. I’ll just suck it up and get locks for my door.
ShelliBean, no big secret there. My parents didn’t want me to work the first year. I wanted to, but they said they would pay the first year, so I didn’t fight it. As I mentioned I am getting a job, so I could take over $600, and then my mom would continue to pay the other $600. My mom actually suggested it, but this is really a last resort, and I hope it would only be temporary. I worked nearly full time in high school, and I’m sick of not supporting myself now. Not to mention the fact that it’s not fair to my mom.
Thank you to everyone for the continued advice, this was my first Pit thread and I was nervous I’d get no responses. I’ll update if she spews anymore nonsense on me tonight, and of course tomorrow after I get legal advice.
Hey, I completely agree that this sudden onset of allergies is highly suspicious and probably a bunch of bs. I just wanted to clear up the fact that animal allergies are from dander, not hair.
As for whether you’ve yet gone so far as to threaten legal action, I realize that you’ve primarily just been venting here, which, as I said, is all good. Sometimes we need a place like this to get our shit out. I just caution you not to get it in your head (or let others here convince you) that just because she co-signed the lease means you can collect her share of the rent if she does move out, for any period longer than that which would mitigate your damages – maybe.
See, that’s the point; we don’t know what your lease says or what the laws are in your jurisdiction. Just because you can afford to pick up your half and your mother pick up the other, doesn’t necessarily mean that you get to choose to do that, and then take Miss FairyFlake to court to recover the half your mother paid over the remainder of the lease. It may be that you have make every reasonable effort to mitigate the damage she caused you when she broke the lease, even though she’s the one who broke it.
For example, that could mean that if you’ve posted notices on the bulletin boards at school and placed ads in the local and campus papers, but still couldn’t find someone to agree to move in with you for 90 days, then yes, she may be liable for those 90 days. But if you do none of that, then try to sue her for those 90 days, you may only prevail for the period of time that the law considers a reasonable time within which to be able to find a suitable roommate. That’s why you need to check with an attorney, and I’m glad to see that you’re going to do that tomorrow. Keep us posted!
So, how’d it go?
I am currently in Celebration, FL and have seen squirrels both in town and in various Disney parks. If you consider the Orlando area to be North FL, then there are squirrels. If it’s just Central FL, well, this anecdote was pointless. It was probably pointless either way.
I have read this thread, but I don’t remember seeing it, so I’ll ask - have you pointed out to her that you’ll likely have to get a new, smaller apartment if she leaves? And that you’ll hold her financially responsible for breaking the current lease since you wouldn’t be moving if she didn’t leave first? I know that at my complex, breaking the lease costs you a month’s rent.
I think the legalities of her breaking the lease are really moot - she won’t live there any longer, she won’t pay, and you can get a massive headache of legal crap to try to collect anything from her that will take forever and you probably won’t get any money anyway. Tell her she has to make up her mind if she’s going or not, when she’s going, and you go find yourself a new roommate that you think you can live with. Take charge of your life, girl!
(And yeah, she’s just giving you excuses. She wants out. Let her go.)
Give us a pic. Preferably one of the numerous pillow fights you two had.
Well I had to reschedule my legal appointment to Friday, because my second interview at Disney involved much more than I was told (4 hours long!). But I’ll start from where I left off last time. Wednesday my roommate told me that she would not leave me stranded, apparently she talked to some of our mutual friends that told her that would be a fucked up thing to do. That didn’t solve the issue of the cat and the supposed allergy. I read up on allergies, and found a product for the cat’s fur that eliminates most of the allergens. I decided to buy it, because it was pretty cheap, and also to see what her reaction would be when I told her. Plus, this way she couldn’t say I did nothing to attempt to help her. When I told her, she didn’t really say whether she would be willing to test it out and reevaluate her position on the cat or not. So we’ll see about that when it arrives in a few days.
Thursday I investigated how to go about a sublease, and found that basically the landlord/office will just write up a new lease with approximately $150 charge for the trouble. It is definitely allowed though. I took that and everything else I learned with me to the legal appointment. What follows is the legal advice, based on our specific lease and the policies set up by the landlord/apartment complex. If she did decide to move out, she would be required to sign papers saying she’s leaving, in order for me to get a new lease written up. I would be required to sign those as well, so in that situation I would be responsible for all of the rent, because by my signing them, I’m essentially stating that I agreed to her leaving. In that situation I would not be able to recover lost money from her. Well, I could always try in civil court, but it probably wouldn’t be worth the trouble.
The other possibility would be her leaving without signing any papers. This would effectively prevent me from moving someone else in legally, because I would need her signature to get a new roommate and a new lease. In that case, I shouldn’t have problems retrieving lost money–at least for the period of time it takes for her to sign those papers–from her in court.
Essentially if I don’t sign off and let her leave, she can’t. Or rather, she can, but it would not be a smart move on her part. Not that that ever stopped her before, but she does have more intelligent people helping her along with this situation and telling her to reconsider this.
If she still wants out (although she hasn’t brought anything up in couple days) I’ll let her, but not until I have a replacement lined up. In any event, this looks like it won’t turn out terribly for me, so I’m relieved. Still pissed that I had to do all of this because she “needed to do what makes [her] happy,” but relieved. Like I told her, it would make me happy to rob an armored car and move to the caribbean, but that doesn’t mean I can do it. Hopefully that sunk in with her and anyone else who has to deal with her in the future won’t be subject to that philosophy of hers.
And Ripper, only for a price. 